Parks and Recreation System Master Plan Update (2016) parks_and_recreation_system_master_plan_update_oct | Page 259

Why City Park Facts?
Data is knowledge, and knowledge is power. Over the past decade, the city parks movement has gained
tremendous power, and one reason is the dramatic increase in the amount of information available about
almost every aspect of urban park and recreation systems.
We are pleased to present another edition of City Park Facts, an almanac of the parks and recreation systems of
the 100 most populous cities. The 2015 edition presents the most data yet, including a snapshot of prominent
urban park conservancies in big cities. As in 2014, we have adjusted our calculation of city land area to exclude
unpopulated airport and railyard acreage, generating a more fair comparison between cities.
This year’s City Park Facts also includes the percentage of residents within a half mile (10-minute walk) of a park
for 10 additional cities, a metric generated by The Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore analysis.
How to use this booklet
When we say “city,” we mean only the municipality, not the metropolitan region. Thus, “Los Angeles” means the
city of Los Angeles, not greater Los Angeles, nor Los Angeles County. However, several cities that are included
in greater Los Angeles—Long Beach, Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Irvine—happen to be large enough to merit
separate inclusion in this booklet and are listed under their own names.
When we say “park,” we are referring to publicly owned and operated parks. In table 1, we count every kind of
park within the municipal boundary of the city, including federal, state, county, regional, and municipal parks.
We do not count private golf or other clubs, nor do we count parks in gated communities.
In most reports we combine the data from all the different park agencies in the city. In a few reports we
separate parks by their management agency, sometimes omitting the various smaller, specialized agencies
in a city.
When we say “operational spending” we mean year-in, year-out work such as landscape and tree maintenance,
facility maintenance, trash removal, recreational programming, planning, administration, policing, lighting,
marketing, etc. “Capital spending” refers to one-time items such as land acquisition, construction, and major
road or structural repairs. In order to provide greater uniformity between agencies, we do not count the
expenses associated with zoos, aquariums, professional sports stadiums, museums, and cemeteries, which
exist in some cities’ parks but not others’. In table 6, total spending includes both operational spending and
capital spending.
For certain tables, we group cities by their average population density (population divided by municipal land
area).We exclude airports, railyards, and parkland—the uninhabited portions of a city—from land area when
calculating density; the four density categories are based on standard deviations from the mean.
The reports published here constitute only a portion of the data available from the Center for City Park
Excellence. For more reports, plus electronic versions of this data, see tpl.org/cityparkfacts. For other studies
carried out by the center, go to tpl.org/CCPE.
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CITY PARK FACTS :: THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND