The Commissioner — Summer 2000

Since You Asked . . .

The May 25, 2000 audio conference Urban Parks and Green Space generated a question that was not answered in the live program. Here is the question and answer.

Do you follow standards (e.g. National Recreation & Park Association standards) for park and recreation facilities in your planning and programming of improvements? Is so, which ones? Do you employ user surveys for preferences? (Mollie Raley, AICP, Department of Agriculture, Delaware)

The use of standards is very tricky business. While the National Recreation & Park Association does have standards for various facilities, the most recent version of their guidelines, Park, Recreation, Open Space and Greenway Guidelines by James D. Mertes and James R. Hall, calls for an individualized community planning approach. The authors recommend that each community should plan and program facilities based upon community need. While that approach is likely to be more expensive and more time-consuming than using straight standards at the beginning, it pays off in effectiveness down the road.

Editor's note: Visit the association's web site at www.activeparks.com.

The advantage is that with this type of planning, parks and open spaces more appropriately serve the community. For instance, if a standard for football fields calls for one field per 3,000 residents, what relevance does that have for a city of 10,000 residents in which 7,000 live in a Del Webb retirement development? Or, what if the school system has lots of football fields? Or what if the community is home to the football hall of fame and the residents expect every child to play?

The other advantage to rejecting the "one size fits all" standards approach to park planning is that, in community-needs based planning, parks and open spaces are more likely to serve more needs and less as simple "recreational facilities." When communities look at their parks from an environmental or cultural preservation perspective, or even from a green infrastructure planning point of view, decisions will be made upon the resource base. Using a set of standards based simply upon population does not allow for that approach to planning. (Response by Mary Eysenbach, Director, The City Parks Forum, American Planning Association).