Financing the Future: The Critical Role of Parks in Urban and Metropolitan Infrastructure

The Critical Role of Parks in Urban and Metropolitan Infrastructure Financing the FutureBy William Fulton Parks can provide a restive and reflective place for people to get away from the hustle and bustle – serving, in words often credited to Frederick Law Olmstead, as “the lungs of the city.” Parks can also provide a place for active recreation, allowing city dwellers the chance to place basketball or softball or tennis in neighbor-hoods where backyards and schoolyards are not readily available. Young parents rely on parks to give their tots a safe place to play, and generations of urban dwellers have looked to public swimming pools – often called “plunges” – to find refreshing escape from summer heat. More recently, city dog owners have found designated dog parks an important place to give their dogs freedom and to create a community of their own. With eight in 10 Americans making their home in metropolitan areas, urban parks are more than ever a critical part of American life and urban infrastructure.All these benefits have made public parks a criti-cal – and permanent – part of the urban system of governance for many decades. Traditionally parks have been provided to the public for free—though recreation pro-grams have often charged a nominal fee – on the theory that in crowded cities parks enhance the quality of life, improve public health and even improve public safety by providing places and activities for at-risk youth who otherwise might be engaged in criminal activity.In recent years, however, urban parks and recre-ation programs have faced a funding crisis. With the financial resources available to local governments in decline, there has been significant competi-tion among different public services for tax funds. Parks and recreation programs have often lost this competition, especially to police and fire services, meaning parks have far less tax support than they used to. This funding crisis has led to a widespread debate about the future role of city and county parks and recreation programs. Simply put, in an era of fewer financial resources, what parks and recreation programs should be provided? Who should provide them? And, most important, how should they be funded?Recently, the Urban Institute and the National Recreation and Park Association in cooperation with the National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties, hosted a roundtable that explored the question of parks financing for urban and metropolitan parks. Experts from around the country – mayors, parks directors and consultants, public health officials, and even a real estate invest-ment expert – gathered to discuss the future of parks financing in the United States. Over the course of the day, some consistent themes emerged about the challenges facing parks today, as did possible solutions. This report summarizes the day’s discussion and lays out challenges, possible solutions and directions for future research.Financing the Future The Critical Role of Parks in Urban and Metropolitan Infrastructure 1IntroductionFor close to a century and a half, public parks have played a vital role in the daily life and public health of urban and metropolitan residents in the United States. In cities and urban areas across the nation large and small, people have looked to public parks to provide a wide variety of benefits that are otherwise difficult to come by in an urban setting. William Fulton, AICP, is Smart Growth America’s Vice President for Policy and Programs. A former Mayor of Ventura, CA, Bill has served a long career as an urban planner, author, professor, and politician in California. Bill is also a Principal in the California-based planning firm, The Planning Center | DC&E and a Senior Scholar at the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. Financing the Future The Critical Role of Parks in Urban and Metropolitan Infrastructure 2Challenges Facing Public Parks In a Time of Fiscal ConstraintDuring the course of the roundtable, the experts identified a wide variety of challenges facing public parks during this time of fiscal restraint, including challenges to the mission and programs to public parks; and challenges to funding. All these chal-lenges are related to each other – and to the current funding constraints in local government.MISSION AND PROGRAMS1. Parks and recreation departments manage enormous amounts of land and are expected to provide a large and wide-ranging set of programs.Over the past century, parks and recreation depart-ments – especially in large urban cities – have taken on an enormous and wide-ranging set of respon-sibilities. For one thing, city parks represent an enormous amount of land in urban and metropoli-tan jurisdictions. In many large cities, parks make up between 10% and 15% of the city’s entire land area. (In Philadelphia, with its sprawling city limits, the parks department is responsible for close to 20 square miles of land.) In large cities, pa