ABQ parks lose ground in ranking system
Ranked 17th last year, city is now #40
Not enough restrooms and not enough splashpads.
Albuquerque’s park system, which last year ranked 17th best among 100 cities, tumbled 23 positions to No. 40 this year in the Trust for Public Land’s 2018 ParkScore Index.
The index analyzes metrics in four key areas: Park access, park acreage, park investment and park amenities.
The TPL ranks metropolitan parks as part of its mission to save land for park spaces, ensuring that people have “healthy, livable communities for generations to come,” said Breece Robertson, TPL’s director of planning and geographic information systems.
The biggest value of the ParkScore, she said, is giving cities “the data to understand the value that their park systems are providing to their citizens, in comparison to other park systems in cities throughout the country.”
Overall, Albuquerque’s parks fared well, beating the national
The flag is to be flown at full staff today. Flying the colors
ParkScore average in a number of areas, Robertson said.
In the park access category, 82 percent of Albuquerque residents live within 10 minutes, or a half mile, of a park compared to the national average of 70 percent of people meeting the 10-minute standard.
The city also received a high ParkScore in the park acreage category, with 23 percent of the city dedicated to parks, open space, bosque trails, bike trails and the like. Nationally, the acreage is 9.3 percent.
Within the category of park amenities, the study looked for such features as basketball courts, off-leash dog parks, playgrounds, recreation and senior centers, splashpads and other water play structures, and restrooms.
Albuquerque ranked 13th in the number of dog parks incorporated into city parks, but its ParkScore was negatively affected in this category because it was found to have 0.7 splashpads per 100,000 residents, a bit lower than the national average of 0.9 per 100,000 residents; and 1.6 restrooms per 10,000 residents, significantly lower than the national ParkScore average of 2.4 restrooms per 10,000 residents.
Dave Simon, director of Albuquerque’s Parks and Recreation Department, agreed that the ParkScore rating is a “useful tool to help us understand better ways to improve our parks.”
However, the Trust for Public Lands “changed the rules and moved the goal posts at the same time,” with their inclusion of restrooms and splashpads as part of the amenities factored into park ratings.
“Dozens of community centers are located in parks and the restrooms in those centers function as park restrooms,” Simon said. “Unfortunately, the TPL did not give us credit for that. I will say that some city parks could merit more restrooms.”
Simon noted that many cities around the country are building more splashpads because they are far less expensive than building and maintaining swimming pools. While it is true that Albuquerque did not meet the TPL’s national per capita average for having park splashpads, it is also clear that the TPL did not take into consideration that the city is located in a desert region with frequent drought cycles.
“The bottom line is this — nothing has really changed and we have an awesome city parks system,” Simon said. “We are at or near the top in so many key measures for park quality, and that’s really the message to take away from the ParkScore report.”