Austin Fails to Meet National Benchmarks on Park Access

When it comes to measuring how family-friendly a city's parks are, one of the most important benchmarks is access: that is, how many families can actually walk to a park from their homes. A new study by the Austin Parks and Recreation Department looking at park access shows Austin performs very poorly: Only 47% of the population lives within walking distance to a park (1/4 to 1/2 mile). In the urban core, where denser housing and less access to private open space is becoming more of the norm, Austin performs even more poorly: only 42% live of Austinites live within walking distance of a park.

Here is what we can aspire to as a city: 

• In Boston, 97% of children live within 1/4 mile of a park. Only 2,900 children do not live within walking access of a park. 
• In New York City, 91% of children live within ¼ mile of a park 
• In San Francisco, 85% of children live within ¼ mile of a park. 
• In Denver, more than 90% of residents live within 6 walkable blocks of a park, which is tracked with GIS analyses to ensure the parks are safely accessible by pedestrians. The city recently raised the park accessibility goal to 4 blocks for urban areas. 
• Seattle has a 1/8-mile goal for urban parks in urban areas, and ¼ to ½ mile for neighborhood parks. More than 79% of children live within ¼ mile of a park. 
• Minneapolis adopted its 6-block goal more than fifty years ago, and now more than 99.4% of the city’s residents live within 6 blocks of a park. 
• In Chicago, more than 90% of the city’s 2.9 million residents live within ½ mile of a park or play lot. The City’s current goal is for each city resident to live within 1/10 mile from a “mini park” in urban areas, ¼ mile from neighborhood parks, and ½ mile from community parks.

More on this important topic in future postings.