[Durham INC] Mapping the parks

[Pat Carstensen]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/03/when-it-comes-park-planning-its-not-just-how-many-where/1456/
The median land area dedicated to park space in U.S. cities is 8.1 percent, according to a 2011 report from The Trust for Public Land [PDF]. How that 8.1 percent spreads itself out, though, varies from city to city – some with a handful of very large parks and others with many smaller parks. But according to a 2010 report from the Centers for Disease Control, only one out of five children in the U.S. lives within a half-mile of a park or playground. For the playground advocacy group KaBOOM!, these numbers are troubling."Just like food deserts, there are play deserts," says Darell Hammond, founder and CEO of KaBOOM! "And one of the things we need to be able to understand better is if you have to be driven to a park, that means somebody who has a license and a car has got to get you there, which probably means you're not going to go as frequently."To help understand the distribution of parks and the areas where access to them is low, KaBOOM! has launched a crowdsourced online park mapping effort. People can contribute to the map by adding the locations of parks and playgrounds in their neighborhoods, including images and information about the amenities the parks and playgrounds feature and ratings of their relative quality.Hammond says the Map of Play effort is aimed at filling a gaping hole in the way cities understand and document their play spaces. Having such information will be critical for cities seeking to solve issues like childhood obesity or to identify places where formal play spaces are in need.
There's lots of Durham parks on the map -- now we just need to go become fans of them! 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20120312/5b07b9e9/attachment.html>