The good news: New York City's large parks average a B+ for maintenance, up from a B a year earlier. The bad news: old problems keep popping up in new places.
But despite the improvements, the 2012 report makes clear that the Parks Department simply hasn't had sufficient resources to keep up with the maintenance demands of 29,000 acres of parkland.
Read the full report. [.pdf]
www.ny4p.org /research/ Playground Utilization
Playground Utilization Study
In an era of budget constraints, how can the Parks Department most efficiently allocate public dollars? Answering that question requires tracking visitor patterns across the park system. In this study, NY4P partnered with New York University to demonstrate how such a model could work – specifically, in ten playgrounds across the city, across the four seasons. The report includes a discussion of how such a tracking method could help the city assess not only Parks Department resource allocation, but also initiatives such as the Department of Transportation’s Public Plazas Program. The study also details specific observations reported by users of the ten playgrounds – playgrounds are vital neighborhood resources and particularly important assets for lower-income households, for example – and provides detailed briefs on each property. Read the report here. [pdf]
And 2009 NY4P.org /research / Park Council District profile /cd22
[pdf]
Park Feature
|
Score
|
Athletic Fields
|
- Not surveyed
|
Bathrooms
|
95
|
Courts
|
92
|
Drinking Fountains
|
33
|
Lawns
|
96
|
Natural areas
|
-
|
Pathways
|
100
|
Playgrounds
|
100
|
Sitting areas
|
100
|
Trees
|
100
|
Water Bodies
|
-
|
2012 park score
|
91
|
2010 park score
|
90
|
Situated on the East River, Astoria Park is a bucolic
waterfront park. The park benefits from the advocacy
and volunteer efforts of the Astoria Park Alliance,
which sponsors neighborhood festivals, park cleanups
and events such as fall leaf days, Mulchfest, and yoga classes.
Successes
A number of features in Astoria Park received perfect scores,
including pathways, playgrounds, sitting areas, and trees.
Challenges
Drinking fountains, which decreased by 50 points from 2010 to 2012,were the lowest scoring feature in Astoria Park.
Two of the three fountains surveyed received automatic failing grades for plumbing problems.
While our survey score does not account for the overall provision of drinking fountains,
we spoke with park advocates who were concerned that there are not enough fountains
to accommodate users throughout the park, making the maintenance of existing fountains
all the more important.
“ Flexible ad hoc use is how people interact and
enjoy their park. We’re trying to find ways that
those ‘river of life’ uses are celebrated. That is
why we advocate for open and green space.
Amenities are wonderful, but they’re only really
wonderful when we see that people are enjoying
things and using them in many ways. ”
- Martha Lopez-Gilpin,
Astoria Park Alliance
The 2012 Report Card on Large Parks
Astoriaparkalliance.blogspot.com /p/ Playground-utilization-study- NY4P.org
2006: Progress Report on Neighborhood Parks
We revisited the parks from our 2003, 2004 and 2005 reports in 2006. The primary finding was that the lowest-scoring parks from the previous year – the ten parks that received “F’s,” retained failing grades. And none of those parks had received capital funding for at least eight years.
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