As of 2023, Chugach State Park in Anchorage, Alaska, was the largest city park in the United States by a long shot, spanning 464,318 acres. Second in the ranking was the Great Dismal Swamp in the Coastal Plain Region of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, at 113 thousand acres. A wide variety of park authorities Most parks in the U.S. are owned by the municipality, state, county, regional agency, or the federal government. Both McDowell Sonoran Preserve and South Mountain Preserve are part of the state park system along with most of the parks in the ranking. One of the more well-known park authorities is the National Park Service (NPS) – an agency of the federal government. Blue Ridge Parkway was the most visited NPS park in 2023 alongside many other well-known U.S. parks. What defines a park? Parks in the U.S. are often called a variety of names, just a few of which are: forest, reserve, preserve and wildlife management area. Sometimes the differences between parks in the U.S. can vary massively from monuments to expansive woodland. The Lincoln Memorial made the ranking of the most visited city parks in the U.S., while this may not seem like it comes under the classification of a ‘park’, it is cared for by the National Park Service.

This graph depicts the size of county-owned city parks in the U.S. in 2010. The Bear Creek Pioneers Park in Houston has an area of 2,168 acres.

The city park with the highest annual visitation in 2023 was Central Park in New York, accounting for a total of 42 million visitors. The second most visited city park in that year was Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, with nearly half the visitation of Central Park, at 24 million.

This graph depicts the size of municipally owned city parks in the U.S. in 2010. The Cullen Park in Houston has a size of 9270 acres.

Spatial equality of parks is a significant issue in environmental justice studies. In cities with high-density development and limited land resources, this study uses a supply-demand adjusted two-step floating catchment area model (2SFCA), paying attention to residents' subjective preferences and psychological accessibility. It assesses equality of access to urban parks from two dimensions: spatial equality and quantitative equality at a fine scale of 100 × 100 m grid resolution. The spatial equality of urban parks in Chengdu is measured under different transportation modes (walking, cycling, and driving) based on multi-source geospatial big data and machine learning approaches. The results show: (1) There were significant differences in the spatial distribution of park accessibility under different modes of transportation. The spatial distribution under walking was significantly influenced by the park itself, while the distribution of rivers significantly influenced the spatial distribution under cycling and driving; (2) Accessibility to urban parks was almost universally equal in terms of driving, relatively equal in terms of cycling, and seriously unequal in terms of walking; (3) Spatial local autocorrelation analysis shows that park accessibility tended to be significantly clustered, with little spatial variation; and (4) The supply and demand of urban parks were relatively equal. The results can help urban planners to formulate effective strategies to alleviate spatial inequality more reasonably and precisely. The applied research methods can further improve the system of scientific evaluation from a new perspective.

This dataset is a combination of the Broward County Parks, Broward County City Parks, and Broward County State Parks datasets.

Broward County Parks: The locations of all sixty-two county-owned and operated parks, last updated March 2013 when the Lafayette Park boundary changed. This layer was reviewed by the Parks and Recreation Division of Broward County on 5/15/2015 with no updates required. This layer will be updates as park boundaries change or new parks are added to Broward County.

Broward County City Parks: The GIS Section reviews the BCGIS.ParkCity layer annually in support of the EOC and the Comprehensive Plan. The data is checked for inclusion and geometric placement accuracy. The GIS Section is no longer updating City Parks 100%. We will be reviewing a select handful of parks each year. Generally we will begin our update schedule with the largest cities first, but a good city parks source may alter that schedule. The years listed below indicate which cities have been updated.

2009: All parks corrected to parcels. Corrected/updated Weston with T. Gates data.

2010: The cities' parks updated included Hollywood, Pompano Beach, and Hollywood.

The review technique was a review and/or incorporation of geodata from Ft. Lauderdale and website information incorporation from Pompano and Hollywood.

2011: Davie Parks updated and corrected based on Irene Degroot's shapefile and aerials. Wilton Manors update complete, city managers office said pocket parks are to be expected soon. West Park parks reflect parcels - note Mary Saunders Park is a very irregular shape, made up of many rights-of-way and will be an exception to our parcel based rule.

2013: Toni Peyton said there were no changes to county parks since Miramar Pinelands. She requested a map of POD parks. Pembroke Pines - reviewed park inventory, park map locator, and spoke with Lori of Chuck Vones' (Dir. Parks and Rec) office. Reviewed Miramar Park Inventory.

2014: Reviewed and updated Coral Springs, Lauderdale By the Sea, Pembroke Park, Pembroke Pines, Lighthouse Point, Fort Lauderdale, Coconut Creek, and West Park.

2015: Reviewed 05/15/15

Broward County State Parks: Two State Parks in Broward County, Fl. Data reviewed 05/15/2015.

Source: Parks and Recreation Division of Broward County

Effective Date: 03/2013

Last Update: 05/15/2015

Update Cycle: As needed

Reason for SelectionProtected natural areas in urban environments provide urban residents a nearby place to connect with nature and offer refugia for some species. They help foster a conservation ethic by providing opportunities for people to connect with nature, and also support ecosystem services like offsetting heat island effects (Greene and Millward 2017, Simpson 1998), water filtration, stormwater retention, and more (Hoover and Hopton 2019). In addition, parks, greenspace, and greenways can help improve physical and psychological health in communities (Gies 2006). Urban park size complements the equitable access to potential parks indicator by capturing the value of existing parks.Input DataSoutheast Blueprint 2024 extentFWS National Realty Tracts, accessed 12-13-2023Protected Areas Database of the United States(PAD-US):PAD-US 3.0national geodatabase -Combined Proclamation Marine Fee Designation Easement, accessed 12-6-20232020 Census Urban Areas from the Census Bureau’s urban-rural classification; download the data, read more about how urban areas were redefined following the 2020 censusOpenStreetMap data “multipolygons” layer, accessed 12-5-2023A polygon from this dataset is considered a beach if the value in the “natural” tag attribute is “beach”. Data for coastal states (VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TX) were downloaded in .pbf format and translated to an ESRI shapefile using R code. OpenStreetMap® is open data, licensed under theOpen Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by theOpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). Additional credit to OSM contributors. Read more onthe OSM copyright page.2021 National Land Cover Database (NLCD): Percentdevelopedimperviousness2023NOAA coastal relief model: volumes 2 (Southeast Atlantic), 3 (Florida and East Gulf of America), 4 (Central Gulf of America), and 5 (Western Gulf of America), accessed 3-27-2024Mapping StepsCreate a seamless vector layer to constrain the extent of the urban park size indicator to inland and nearshore marine areas <10 m in depth. The deep offshore areas of marine parks do not meet the intent of this indicator to capture nearby opportunities for urban residents to connect with nature. Shallow areas are more accessible for recreational activities like snorkeling, which typically has a maximum recommended depth of 12-15 meters. This step mirrors the approach taken in the Caribbean version of this indicator.Merge all coastal relief model rasters (.nc format) together using QGIS “create virtual raster”.Save merged raster to .tif and import into ArcPro.Reclassify the NOAA coastal relief model data to assign areas with an elevation of land to -10 m a value of 1. Assign all other areas (deep marine) a value of 0.Convert the raster produced above to vector using the “RasterToPolygon” tool.Clip to 2024 subregions using “Pairwise Clip” tool.Break apart multipart polygons using “Multipart to single parts” tool.Hand-edit to remove deep marine polygon.Dissolve the resulting data layer.This produces a seamless polygon defining land and shallow marine areas.Clip the Census urban area layer to the bounding box of NoData surrounding the extent of Southeast Blueprint 2024.Clip PAD-US 3.0 to the bounding box of NoData surrounding the extent of Southeast Blueprint 2024.Remove the following areas from PAD-US 3.0, which are outside the scope of this indicator to represent parks:All School Trust Lands in Oklahoma and Mississippi (Loc Des = “School Lands” or “School Trust Lands”). These extensive lands are leased out and are not open to the public.All tribal and military lands (“Des_Tp” = "TRIBL" or “Des_Tp” = "MIL"). Generally, these lands are not intended for public recreational use.All BOEM marine lease blocks (“Own_Name” = "BOEM"). These Outer Continental Shelf lease blocks do not represent actively protected marine parks, but serve as the “legal definition for BOEM offshore boundary coordinates...for leasing and administrative purposes” (BOEM).All lands designated as “proclamation” (“Des_Tp” = "PROC"). These typically represent the approved boundary of public lands, within which land protection is authorized to occur, but not all lands within the proclamation boundary are necessarily currently in a conserved status.Retain only selected attribute fields from PAD-US to get rid of irrelevant attributes.Merged the filtered PAD-US layer produced above with the OSM beaches and FWS National Realty Tracts to produce a combined protected areas dataset.The resulting merged data layer contains overlapping polygons. To remove overlapping polygons, use the Dissolve function.Clip the resulting data layer to the inland and nearshore extent.Process all multipart polygons (e.g., separate parcels within a National Wildlife Refuge) to single parts (referred to in Arc software as an “explode”).Select all polygons that intersect the Census urban extent within 0.5 miles. We chose 0.5 miles to represent a reasonable walking distance based on input and feedback from park access experts. Assuming a moderate intensity walking pace of 3 miles per hour, as defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s physical activity guidelines, the 0.5 mi distance also corresponds to the 10-minute walk threshold used in the equitable access to potential parks indicator.Dissolve all the park polygons that were selected in the previous step.Process all multipart polygons to single parts (“explode”) again.Add a unique ID to the selected parks. This value will be used in a later step to join the parks to their buffers.Create a 0.5 mi (805 m) buffer ring around each park using the multiring plugin in QGIS. Ensure that “dissolve buffers” is disabled so that a single 0.5 mi buffer is created for each park.Assess the amount of overlap between the buffered park and the Census urban area using “overlap analysis”. This step is necessary to identify parks that do not intersect the urban area, but which lie within an urban matrix (e.g., Umstead Park in Raleigh, NC and Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve in Atlanta, GA). This step creates a table that is joined back to the park polygons using the UniqueID.Remove parks that had ≤10% overlap with the urban areas when buffered. This excludes mostly non-urban parks that do not meet the intent of this indicator to capture parks that provide nearby access for urban residents. Note: The 10% threshold is a judgement call based on testing which known urban parks and urban National Wildlife Refuges are captured at different overlap cutoffs and is intended to be as inclusive as possible.Calculate the GIS acres of each remaining park unit using the Add Geometry Attributes function.Buffer the selected parks by 15 m. Buffering prevents very small and narrow parks from being left out of the indicator when the polygons are converted to raster.Reclassify the parks based on their area into the 7 classes seen in the final indicator values below. These thresholds were informed by park classification guidelines from the National Recreation and Park Association, which classify neighborhood parks as 5-10 acres, community parks as 30-50 acres, and large urban parks as optimally 75+ acres (Mertes and Hall 1995).Assess the impervious surface composition of each park using the NLCD 2021 impervious layer and the Zonal Statistics “MEAN” function. Retain only the mean percent impervious value for each park.Extract only parks with a mean impervious pixel value <80%. This step excludes parks that do not meet the intent of the indicator to capture opportunities to connect with nature and offer refugia for species (e.g., the Superdome in New Orleans, LA, the Astrodome in Houston, TX, and City Plaza in Raleigh, NC).Extract again to the inland and nearshore extent.Export the final vector file to a shapefile and import to ArcGIS Pro.Convert the resulting polygons to raster using the ArcPy Feature to Raster function and the area class field.Assign a value of 0 to all other pixels in the Southeast Blueprint 2024 extent not already identified as an urban park in the mapping steps above. Zero values are intended to help users better understand the extent of this indicator and make it perform better in online tools.Use the land and shallow marine layer and “extract by mask” tool to save the final version of this indicator.Add color and legend to raster attribute table.As a final step, clip to the spatial extent of Southeast Blueprint 2024.Note: For more details on the mapping steps, code used to create this layer is available in theSoutheast Blueprint Data Downloadunder > 6_Code.Final indicator valuesIndicator values are assigned as follows:6= 75+ acre urban park5= 50 to <75 acre urban park4= 30 to <50 acre urban park3= 10 to <30 acre urban park2=5 to <10acreurbanpark1 = <5 acre urban park0 = Not identified as an urban parkKnown IssuesThis indicator does not include park amenities that influence how well the park serves people and should not be the only tool used for parks and recreation planning. Park standards should be determined at a local level to account for various community issues, values, needs, and available resources.This indicator includes some protected areas that are not open to the public and not typically thought of as “parks”, like mitigation lands, private easements, and private golf courses. While we experimented with excluding them using the public access attribute in PAD, due to numerous inaccuracies, this inadvertently removed protected lands that are known to be publicly accessible. As a result, we erred on the side of including the non-publicly accessible lands.The NLCD percent impervious layer contains classification inaccuracies. As a result, this indicator may exclude parks that are mostly natural because they are misclassified as mostly impervious. Conversely, this indicator may include parks that are mostly impervious because they are misclassified as mostly

As of March 2023, Chiba was the prefecture in Japan with the highest number of city parks, amounting to approximately 6.41 thousand. Hokkaido Prefecture followed with around 4.98 thousand city parks. There were over 114.7 thousand city parks scattered throughout Japan in that year. City parks refer to parks that were built as a part of city planning, such as parks in residential areas, urban parks, large-scale parks, green buffer zones, and city parks run by the county.

Larger NYC parks (generally >20 acres) are subdivided into smaller sections that make inspecting these parks feasible and efficient. These sections are called "zones." The size and boundaries usually conform to one or more of the following criteria: Zones should be inspectable in 1-2 hours; zone boundaries should follow the park’s features (paths, tree lines, etc) whenever possible; and/or conform to pre-existing boundaries used to divide the park for maintenance; and/or define a cohesive area within the park (ballfields, wooded areas, etc). Besides zones, this layer contains a handful of Sitting Areas that are part of larger parks but could not be defined as zones due to their smaller size.

Rapid urbanization, while transforming people’s living environments, also brings a series of urban issues such as the urban heat island effect. The urban park is an effective means to alleviate the urban heat island effect in summer. How to make better use of the cold island effect formed by urban parks to improve the urban outdoor thermal environment is an important topic. This manuscript takes Xi’an as the research area, using remote sensing data as the data source and combining field surveys, to explore the cooling characteristics of the cold island effect in the urban built-up area. It is demonstrated that, the influencing factors of the cooling effect of urban park cold islands are summarized: the area and perimeter of the park, the area and perimeter of water bodies, and the area of trees are all positively correlated with the cooling effect. The surrounding building density and building plot ratio are also positively correlated with the cooling effect of the green space. A comprehensive scoring model for each influencing factor is established, and the principal component analysis method is used to determine the weight of each indicator on the cooling effect of park design elements, among which the area of green space parks has the greatest influence weight. The demand space for cold islands in Xi’an’s parks is analyzed, and optimization strategies and suggestions for improving the urban thermal environment are put forward from both inside and outside the park.

A park is simply defined as a place for recreation, almost always outdoors. Wikipedia.org further defines a park as "an area of natural, semi-natural, or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of grassy areas, rocks, soil, and trees, but may also contain buildings and other artifacts such as monuments, fountains or playground structures. In North America, many parks have fields for playing sports such as soccer, baseball and football, and paved areas for games such as basketball. Many parks have trails for walking, biking and other activities. Some parks are built adjacent to bodies of water or watercourses, and these parks may comprise a beach or boat dock area. Often, the smallest parks are in urban areas, where a park may take up only a city block or less. Urban parks often have benches for sitting and they may contain picnic tables and barbecue grills. Parks have differing rules regarding whether dogs can be brought into the park: some parks prohibit dogs; some parks allow them with restrictions (e.g., use of a leash); and some parks, which may be called "dog parks," permit dogs to run off-leash.The largest parks can be vast natural areas of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres (thousands of square miles), with abundant wildlife and natural features such as mountains and rivers. In many large parks, camping in tents is allowed with a permit. Many natural parks are protected by law, and users may have to follow restrictions (e.g., rules against open fires or bringing in glass bottles). Large national and sub-national parks are typically overseen by a park ranger or a park warden. Large parks may have areas for canoeing and hiking in the warmer months and, in some northern hemisphere countries, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in colder months.""Open space" is defined as property protected from development for the purposes of preserving the upland greenbelt, habitat, native species, or special environments. Recreation is usually allowed in these open spaces, but it is generally limited to passive recreation such walking, hiking, bicycling, etc.

In 2023, the city in the United States with the highest share of parkland was Anchorage, Alaska, where approximately 80 percent of the city was parkland. In second place, with almost half the percentage of parkland was Fremont, California, where 44 percent of the city was parkland.

Description -There polygons represent known public and private parklands throughout the city of Baltimore. Attribute information includes details about park location, acreage, ownership,    managing entity, and park category. Parks are categorized as:Citywide parks: Parks that serve residents across the entire city and host a variety of permitted and non-permitted recreational activities or facilities. They tend to be the larger parks in the city ranging from ten acres to over 990 acres in size. While this represents a wide range in size, several of the smaller parks are part of a larger contiguous park network.Neighborhood parks: These parks serve as basic units of the park system for users within a quarter to half-mile distance. They range between 1 and 28 acres in size and typically offer two or more amenities such as a playground, basketball court, athletic field, and green spaces. Many of the Neighborhood parks are informal in design, are clearly visible and located along well trafficked streets.Mini parks: Small parks that may include one or two amenities such as a pavilion, seating area, playground, or basketball court. Many of the Mini Parks are sited off the beaten path, some are located behind houses or bordered by less trafficked streets. These parks are typically less than 3 acres in size.Green spaces: Open lawn spaces without amenities and of varied size. These spaces serve as flexible spaces for active or passive use. Some include community gardens.Special use: Stand-alone park spaces that have a specific use or role associated with them.Forested spaces: Wooded or forested areas that may or may not be accessible to the public.Civic spaces: Spaces that are significant to the City’s history, host monuments or contain paved plazas that are used for citywide events and gatherings related to recreation and parks or other non BCRP related activities.Data updates on a rolling basis as new parks are constructed or old parks decommissioned. Last updated 01/12/2024. Metadata Contact : jason.chang@baltimorecity.gov To leave feedback or ask a question about this dataset, please fill out the following form: Parks feedback form.

When prioritizing regions for conservation protection, decisions are often based on the principle that a single large (SL) reserve should support more species than several small (SS) reserves of the same total area (SLOSS). This principle remains a central paradigm in conservation planning despite conflicting empirical evidence and methodological concerns. In urban areas where small parks tend to dominate and policies to promote biodiversity are becoming increasingly popular, determining the most appropriate prioritization method is critical. Here, we document the role of SLOSS in defining the seasonal diversity of birds in 475 parks in 21 US cities. Collections of small parks were consistently associated with higher species richness, spatial turnover, and rarity. Collections of both small and large parks were associated with higher phylogenetic and functional diversity whose patterns varied across seasons and cities. Thus, collections of small parks are a reliable source of species richness driven by higher spatial turnover and rarity, whereas collections of both small and large parks contain the potential to support higher phylogenetic and functional diversity. The presence of strong intra-annual and geographic variation emphasizes the need for regional prioritization strategies where multiple diversity metrics are examined across parks and seasons.

The urban furniture data set in large parks includes a complete inventory of these, most of which was updated in 2013. Among other things, in the form of georeferenced points, they include benches, barbecues, bollards, sports equipment, drinking fountains, trash cans, bike racks, bike racks, picnic tables and some other elements of large parks. The boundaries of large parks are also available on the portal.**This third party metadata element was translated using an automated translation tool (Amazon Translate).**

The vitality of urban parks reflects the intensity of green space utilization, gauging visitors’ overall perception of the parks, facilitating integrated park management, and ensuring the parks’ sustainable development. But, the park’s spatial vitality characteristics change over time, and the factors influencing the differences in vitality have not been conclusively established. Therefore, This study employs Baidu heat map data to examine the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of park visitor vitality on holidays and weekdays in urban parks located in the core urban region of Fuzhou City. Meanwhile, this will be achieved by utilizing a geo-detector and MGWR model to examine the factors influencing visitor vitality and analyze the spatial variations in the impact coefficients. The conclusions are as follows: (1)Park vitality varied dramatically between different periods, with park vitality being higher on holidays than on weekdays. The peaks of vitality are all concentrated at 10:00 and 16:00. The park’s vitality on holidays had a pattern of many peaks, with a wave-like fluctuation. On weekdays, there was a notable M-shaped feature. (2)The spatial distribution of vitality has a "bimodal" pattern with two distinct cores and numerous fragmented fragments. There are notable variations in the spatial liveliness of different parks, characterized by a distinct "long-tail effect." In other words, there are just a few parks with high vitality, while many parks have low vitality. (3)The peripheral location features (G2) and the characteristics of transportation infrastructure (G3)are the main factors affecting park vitality; X11 amenities have the highest coefficient of impact on park vitality (0.501 on weekdays and 0.491 on holidays). The factors within the Park attributes (G1) and the park’s social media level (G4) showed a two-way interaction strength increase. (4)The coefficients of influence of impact factors on the space heterogeneity of vacation park vitality exhibit significant variation. The positive indicators have a spatial distribution that decreases from the northwest to the southeast, with the old city district having higher coefficients than the new city district. The negative indicators display the reverse pattern. This study offers scientific methodologies and recommendations for improving and designing urban park landscapes.

Understanding how wildlife responds to ever-encroaching urbanization is of great concern. Bats are the second-most speciose mammalian order and while many appear to be urban adapted, we currently have a limited understanding of their demography and habitat use within urban environments. Using a combination of captures to obtain demographic data, radio-telemetry to examine foraging and roosting behaviour, and data on diet and prey availability, we examined how big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus), a synurbic species, use an urban green space (High Park) in Canada?s largest city centre, Toronto. We found that adult males outnumbered adult females more than two to one and that males were found throughout the park, while females were concentrated in an area with greater access to water, but lower prey availability. We also found that bats of both sexes were in poorer body condition than reported for other non-urban areas, including a site within southern Ontario. Our data suggest that High Park may not provide adequate resources for reproductive females as they were never found roosting in the park and beetles, their preferred prey, were limited. Although previous studies suggest urban green spaces may offer refuge to bats, most have not considered sex-specific responses to urbanization as they have largely been based on acoustic surveys. Our study therefore highlights the importance of considering demographic differences in response to urbanization to better inform urban management plans and green spaces.

The GIS Section reviews the layer in support of the EOC and the Urban Planning Division. The data is checked for inclusion and geometric placement accuracy. The GIS Section is no longer updating City Parks 100%. We will be reviewing a select handful of parks each year. Generally, we will begin our update schedule with the largest cities first, but a good city parks source may alter that schedule. The years listed below indicate which cities have been updated.

2009: All parks corrected to parcels. Corrected/updated Weston with T. Gates data.

2010: The cities' parks updated included Hollywood, Pompano Beach, and Hollywood.

The review technique was a review and/or incorporation of geodata from Ft. Lauderdale and website information incorporation from Pompano and Hollywood.

2011: Davie Parks updated and corrected based on Irene Degroot's shapefile and aerials. Wilton Manors update complete, city manager’s office said pocket parks are to be expected soon. West Park parks reflect parcels - note Mary Saunders Park is a very irregular shape, made up of many rights-of-way and will be an exception to our parcel-based rule.

2013: Toni Peyton said there were no changes to county parks since Miramar Pinelands. She requested a map of POD parks. Pembroke Pines - reviewed park inventory, park map locator, and spoke with Lori of Chuck Vones' (Dir. Parks and Rec) office. Reviewed Miramar Park Inventory.

2014: Reviewed and updated Coral Springs, Lauderdale By the Sea, Pembroke Park, Pembroke Pines, Lighthouse Point, Fort Lauderdale, Coconut Creek, and West Park.

2015: Reviewed 05/15/15

2021: Updated by BCGIS - Ruth Rothkoph Park and Lieberman Botanical Park in Lauderhill.

Source: BCGIS

Effective Date:

Last Update: 08/03/2021

Update Cycle: As needed.

This statistic shows the cities with the largest number of park playgrounds per 10,000 residents (not including playgrounds in school sites) in the United States in 2023. There were 7 park playgrounds for every 10,000 residents in Madison, Wisconsin, making it the city with the most playgrounds per 10,000 residents.

Geospatial data about City of New York Large Public Park. Export to CAD, GIS, PDF, CSV and access via API.