Albuquerque is in the middle of the pack for park access
City hopes new space will improve ranking of 40th out of 100 U.S. cities
About four out of five Albuquerque residents live within a 10-minute walk to a public park or open space, a survey from the Trust for Public Land indicates.
That means around 100,000 people don’t have a park within a 10-minute walk of home, but city officials say they can improve on that statistic.
The San Francisco-based nonprofit organization, along with the National Recreation and Park Association and the Urban Land Institute, is leading a movement to place a park or natural area within a 10-minute walk of every U.S. resident.
More than 200 mayors have endorsed the 10-minute goal, and Mayor Tim Keller said
recently he has joined that effort. He said the city can take steps to make sure all families can access a park easily, no matter where they live.
“We’re going to identify the gaps, and that’s the first step in the analysis,” Keller said. “We know we can build more parks essentially where the gaps are. It’s actually a good thing in that our city in general does really well in the 10-minute category. It’s actually one of the things Albuquerque’s good at, and we should be proud of that, but we need to close those gaps.”
One of the largest park access gaps in the city will close, Keller said, once work is completed at Daniel Webster Park, which is located in the Southeast Heights.
The park access statistics are part of a “ParkScore” profile compiled by the Trust for Public Land, which analyzes data for the 100 most populous cities.
The Duke City ranked 40th in the ParkScore survey of the largest 100 cities in the country this year. The city ranked 17th in the 2017 survey, but TPL added restrooms and splash pads to this year’s criteria, which brought the city’s score down.
But David Simon, the city’s director of parks and recreation, said Albuquerque compares “favorably” to larger cities with more resources.
“We have an excellent park and open space program that we should be very proud of,” he said. “We’re by no means giving up on continual improvement. Continual improvement is our goal.”
Lawrence Rael, the city’s chief operating officer, said future planning efforts will include information from the TPL survey.
“The Daniel Webster park will move us closer to the 100 percent that we are looking at,” he said. “We’ll incorporate the information into our review process in our planning department, so as development occurs, we can designate areas for parks to be constructed, and that will get us closer to where the mayor and all of us want to be.”
Locations of Albuquerque’s parks and open spaces appear well distributed, at least as far as the percentage of the population measured by age and income bracket with 10-minute park access.
The survey indicates that 81 percent of residents age 19 and under, 82 percent of those 20 to 64, and 82 percent of residents over 64 live within a 10-minute walk.
About 83 percent of households that earn under 75 percent of median city income are served under the 10-minute walk threshold, the survey shows, along with 83 percent of households earning 75 percent to 125 percent, and 82 percent of households earning over 125 percent.
Simon said getting from 82 percent to 100 percent won’t be an easy task, but that doesn’t mean the city won’t try.
“The last 100 yards can be the hardest steps,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you stop short of the goal. We need to use every tool at our disposal to close that gap.”
Simon said getting to the ultimate 100 percent access goal will involve creative thinking and the use of diverse strategies.
“Strategic location of new park projects is one of the most important things we can do,” he said. “It’s not always possible to drop a park down, and there are some inherent limits in underserved areas, but we can use strategic location of new parks to increase our score.”
For the survey, the TPL organization used advanced computer mapping technology to create digital maps evaluating park accessibility.
Instead of measuring distance to a local park, the survey took into account the location of park entrances and physical obstacles to access.
If residents are separated from a nearby park by a major highway, for example, the survey does not count the park as accessible to those residents, unless there is a bridge, underpass or easy access point across the highway.
City officials can use ParkScore-generated maps to guide park improvement efforts, studying park access on a blockby-block basis and pinpointing the areas where new parks are needed most. The website is free and available to the public by visiting tpl.org/10minutewalk.
Simon said the department also faces keeping up with new residential development in a growing city.
“It’s always a challenge to keep up with the growing edge of the city,” he said. “You need to keep up with where the population is moving and where there are new houses and more people living. There’s some work to do there, but even on the fringes of the city, we’re doing pretty well.”
In addition to information on park access, the TPL survey also indexed data concerning park acreage, which is based on a city’s median park size and the percentage of total city area dedicated to parks; park investment, which measures park spending per resident; and park amenities, which counts the availability of six popular park features: basketball hoops, recreation and senior centers, off-leash dog parks, restrooms, playgrounds and splash pads, and other water play structures.
Park safety is not among the criteria measured in the survey.
In Minneapolis, the TPL’s highest-rated city for parks, 97 percent of residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park. In Charlotte, N.C., the organization’s lowest-rated city, that number drops to 26 percent.
According to the survey, 70 percent of residents in the 100 cities scored live with a 10-minute walk of a park.
“High quality parks make cities healthier in nearly every way,” said Adrian Benepe, senior vice president and director of city park development for The Trust for Public Land, in a statement. “Proximity to parks increases physical activity levels among children and adults, reducing risk for obesity, diabetes, and other serious health conditions. Parks also help clean the air, mitigate the risk of storm damage, build relationships among neighbors and contribute to economic growth.”
“WE HAVE AN EXCELLENT PARK AND OPEN SPACE PROGRAM THAT WE SHOULD BE VERY PROUD OF . ... CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT IS OUR GOAL. DAVID SIMON PARKS AND RECREATION DIRECTOR