When it comes to extolling San Antonio’s urban attractions, public parks, and green spaces don’t make the list. San Antonio ranks 71 out of 100 U.S. cities, according to the fifth annual ParkScore survey of city parks conducted by the Trust for Public Land (TPL) ParkScore. That’s better than Houston and Fort Worth, tied at 78, but well below Dallas at 54 and Austin at 47, the only Texas city to rank in the top 50.
In the survey, ParkScore ranked the 100 largest U.S. cities according to an index that measures the amount of park land in a given city, median park size, population, average per capita spending on parks, proximity and access, and the number of basketball hoops, dog parks, playgrounds, and recreation centers.
One factor leading to San Antonio’s low ranking is that only a small number of residents live within a 10-minute walking distance of a public park. In San Antonio, most people have to drive in order to enjoy a public park.
Alexandra Hiple, a research associate for TPL, said although it’s difficult to make such predictions, San Antonio should improve its standing in the 2017 rankings with this year’s addition of the 505-Acre Pearsall Park. Located just south of Lackland Air Force Base at 4700 Old Pearsall Road, the park will add a dog park, basketball court, and playground to San Antonio’s ParkScore the next time around. The park also features 5K, 10K, and single loop half-marathon courses, BMX and mountain bike trails, a zip line, a disc golf course, a CrossFit pavilion, splash pads, a skate park, and two public art installations.
Additionally, the City plans to develop a 165-acre park in Stone Oak over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone, and reserved the right to purchase 38.7 more acres for sports fields. The project could eventually could be expanded to more than 200 acres, and should also help the city’s park score. The area is one of the last and biggest undeveloped plots of land on the Northside and will sit in the heart of a rapidly growing area of San Antonio.
(Read more: Council Approves Conservation Easement, Park in Stone Oak)
There are other projects that will likely help the cause on the horizon. One is the planned addition of an eight-acre Great Lawn to Hemisfair which, if funded in the 2017 bond, should go a long way towards improving the city’s urban core access to green spaces. Additionally, the continuing expansion of the Howard Peak Greenway Trails System should raise the city’s low score.
2016 marks the fifth year TPL has ranked U.S. cities according to their city parks. San Antonio has been a part of the ranking since the beginning, when only the top 40 largest cities were ranked. Each year, more cities are added to the list as funds become available.
The most recent ranking uses financial numbers based on a three-year rolling average from 2012, 2013, and 2014, but the rest of the data is from 2015.
According to the 2015 data, 8.9% of San Antonio’s 26,132 acres is covered in park land, which includes all parks, linear parks, and trails under the jurisdiction of the San Antonio Parks & Recreation Department. Peter Harnik, director of the Center for City Parks Excellence, said that that percentage is considered average.
Where San Antonio and most Texas cities fall short, he said, is in park access, or how close parks are to the average citizen. He said only 36% of San Antonians can walk to a park in 10 minutes or less.
“If the city were looking to the future to improve their ParkScore, a major goal would be to create more little walkable neighborhood parks in crowded neighborhoods so that people can grab their kid’s hands or put them on a scooter and go to the park,” Harnik said.
San Antonio also ranks comparatively low when it comes to the amount of basketball hoops, playgrounds, and dog parks. The city has 1.7 basketball hoops and playgrounds per 10,000 residents and .5 dog parks per 100,000 residents, according to the 2015 data.
Harnik said adding hoops, playgrounds, and dog parks would be a fairly easy way to improve San Antonio’s score. The city’s recreation and senior center statistics, he said, are slightly more promising compared to other cities at .7 per 20,000 residents.
Where San Antonio does excel, according to Harnik and the ParkScore rankings, is with its median park size of 11.5 acres and its average spending on parks per resident at $94.63. This number reflects a combination of the Parks Department’s yearly spending plus any capital improvement spending, divided by the city’s population. The national median is $82 per resident.
Janet Martin, assistant director of the Parks Department, said the her organization has made many improvements to parks in recent years and plans to continue adding park land and trails, but needs the public to get involved and be more vocal about what they want.
“We have plans to continue to expand our parks and green spaces and some of them are already underway,” Martin said. “Pearsall Park is a perfect (example) to see how that park opened and the amount of people that are using that space everyday.
“We have a strong commitment here at the Parks Department and we need the public to tell us what they would like to see different in their parks. What we hear now is people want more — they want more parkland, more green space, and more amenities in the parks and that is what we are looking toward right now as a department.“
San Antonio also performed poorly in an in-depth analysis of 2016’s Best & Worst Cities for Recreation done by personal-finance website WalletHub.
WalletHub ranked San Antonio 98 out of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. Fort Worth stands at 89, Houston at 88, Dallas at 85, and Austin at 49, making it the only Texas city to crack the top 50 again.
WalletHub looks at more than just the city’s parks. To arrive at the overall ranking, each city was ranked across 35 individual categories, from park land acreage to food prices. San Antonio performed well in the same areas as those described in the ParkScore, ranking 36 out of 100 for acres of park land per capita and 46 for spending on parks per capita. The Alamo City also performed well in the swimming pools per capita category, ranking 44 out of 100.
San Antonio’s lower individual rankings mirror Harnik’s suggestions for more playgrounds and small, walkable parks. WalletHub ranked San Antonio 71 in terms of the percentage of the population with walkable park access. They also ranked the city 78 for number of playgrounds per capita and 79 for number of tennis courts per capita.
Absent from both of these rankings is data from the Bexar County Parks, an independently run system of 11 parks and three civic centers that comprise 408 acres — and that number is growing.
The Parks Division is currently focusing on Hot Wells, a former resort that Bexar County Commissioners approved to transform into a County park in October 2015. Projects to add three more playgrounds are also underway.
Parks Director Ken McGlamery said the Parks Division has begun construction on a playground at Mission Park II as well as the financial specifications for two new playgrounds at Rodriguez and Raymond Russell Park.
To reserve an amenity at one of the County parks, visit their website, select the desired amenity, and view the calendar of available dates. Weekends in the summer are a high traffic time for County park amenities, with most weekend slots already booked through the month.
Reservations also can be made by calling (210) 335-7275 or visiting their offices at 100 Dolorosa Suite #311 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Top image: City employee Laura Gomez picks up litter left behind from Easter campers at Brackenridge Park. Photo by Scott Ball.
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Council Approves Conservation Easement, Park in Stone Oak
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One problem I see with their statistical analysis is that they use median park size rather than a ratio of park acreage to population. Being an older city with lots of small plazas and one that has been developing lots of thin linear trails, our medium size is probably pulled downward. All of our new city parks (such as Hardberger and Pearsall) and our new suburban parks (Friedrich, Eisenhower, etc.) would probably put us at a better level because of their sizes if the ratio of park lands to population was used.
Speaking of SA’s parks….the City Council is angling to “improve” Brackenridge Park. The jury is still out if these “improvements” will increase access to the park and its many features or if it will alter the park so drastically that using it as it has been traditionally will be difficult to impossible. There is talk of parking garages, closed entrances, fees, etc. This process needs to be monitored. The next (and last on scheduled) public meeting is this Wednesday, July 13, Ramirez Community Center, 1011 Gillette Blvd., 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Be sure you know what your city councilperson is advocating for in terms of Brackenridge Park and let him/her know what you think of the proposals.
If Brackenridge Park “ain’t broke,” then why is City Hall so hot to “fix” it?????
Because it’s broke.
I welcome more parks, but agree that the methodology is skewed more toward “walkable” than “parks” and not entirely in the city’s control.
That is, you can live right next to a great park like Hardberger, but if the developer of the subdivision builds a fence that forces you to drive out of your gated cul de sac to get to the park, you don’t get credit for being able to walk to a park, even though the city has invested in a great park, and you also have lots of (non public) green space or a pool in your subdivision.
In New York, you may not have any green space when you come out of your high rise unless you walk several blocks to a park.
You can argue about which lifestyle you prefer, but I think we’re better off comparing ourselves to other similar cities, than saying our “score” is less than New York or San Francisco.
Policy makers in SA should keep working on creating great park and recreation spaces accessible to all, but take these scores and rankings with a grain of salt.
Dansk Tex is more right than he knows on the faulty methodology used by many of these rankings. We (San Antonio Sports) have looked in to them and their databases are faulty and don’t take in innovative ways of dealing with this issue. Two jump to mind locally.
1–San Antonio created an ordinance decades ago that required developers to either build a park in their development or contribute funds to the park department to develop a regional park. Most of the large developments developed their own park(s) and recreation center(s) as an amenity for their community. None of them count and all of them are within walking distance of thousands of homes.
2–Since FY 2012, San Antonio has participated in SPARK (School PARK), where the city gives a 2:1 matching grant to a school district to improve their playground and then open it as a public park whenever school is not in session. Since FY ’12, San Antonio has developed more than 15 SPARKs, all of which are within walking distance of nearly 1,000 homes each. None of these count, because the city does not own the land.
All of these rankings are helpful, but they are also stuck in the past and fail to recognize innovative approaches to improving the health and fitness of communities in the most affordable ways possible.
I think the Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore is useful in mapping so clearly where they see the need for improved pedestrian park access to be the highest (areas which they map in red) within the City of San Antonio — including based on existing residential density and the ages and average income levels of residents (suggesting concentrations of elderly and/or children) in areas currently beyond a ten minute formal (able to be mapped) walk of a park entrance or park space.
The mapping could be a useful tool in evaluating and shaping various public park and neighborhood plans as well as prioritizing overall City park and pedestrian infrastructure spending (such as with the upcoming 2017-2022 bond program) – so that our public efforts help to address some of our City’s highest pedestrian need areas and corridors.
For example, from my perspective 2016 TPL ParkScore mapping (along with considering City pedestrian fatality and injury mapping and the location of public schools) makes the case for prioritizing the conversion of Alazan Creek into City park recreation trail from Lombrano Street to the confluence with Apache Creek and San Pedro Creek trails — ideally by 2018 if not sooner.
This roughly three miles of City park trail work and open space improvements (planned in detail in 2011) would offer new formal pedestrian park access for a number of dense greater downtown neighborhoods including areas of high need (five distinct zones along Alazan Creek identified by ParkScore) while also improving pedestrian corridors to public schools (six campuses), Woodlawn Lake Park and downtown as well as through areas with high pedestrian injury and fatality counts.
Likewise, TPL ParkScore mapping suggests the benefit of constructing a protected City park trail along a Union Pacific rail line (adopting the ‘active rails with safe trails’ pattern that other US cities currently enjoy) from at least Olmos Drive HEB to W. Magnolia Avenue — roughly one mile of trail work (although the trail could be extended further north and south along the rail line for added pedestrian benefit and stronger connections to major parks and downtown).
The City’s recently finalized Hazard Mitigation Action Plan calls for improvements along this rail corridor that a protected City park pedestrian trail could help to achieve.
TPL ParkScore mapping is useful in helping to mark (along with other measures) areas of high existing residential density in San Antonio with urgent need for pedestrian improvements including access to park space. Ideally, it will help the City think about and implement cost effective ways of improving pedestrian park and other access beyond the current status quo of using public funds to build parking lots and structures and substandard pedestrian infrastructure including paths that lead nowhere.
See:
San Antonio’s ParkScore Map
http://parkscore.tpl.org/map.php?city=San%20Antonio
San Antonio Pedestrian Accident and Fatality Mapping
http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/San-Antonio-officials-push-for-safer-pedestrian-6552096.php
Westside Creeks Restoration Project Conceptual Plan (2011)
http://www.westsidecreeks.com/westside-creeks-restoration-project-conceptual-plan/
Texas Safe Routes to Schools
http://www.txsaferoutes.org/
City of San Antonio Hazard Mitigation Action Plan (2016)
http://www.saoemprepare.com/
Opportunity Score – Jobs within 30 Minutes by Transit and Walking
(with high Opportunity Score in San Antonio in areas with high TPL ParkScore identified pedestrian improvement needs as well as high pedestrian injury and fatality counts)
https://labs.redfin.com/opportunity-score?south=29.17465699162818&west=-98.7300111394531&north=29.78792952496125&east=-98.29879776054685&zoom=11&lat=38.8976763&lng=-77.03652979999998
Walkways, Sidewalks and Public Spaces
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/univcourse/pdf/swless13.pdf
Walkability in Texas: “highly walkable urban places [and lifestyles] are what the knowledge economy is demanding”
http://siteselection.com/issues/2016/jul/2016-sustainability-rankings-redefine-ecosystems.cfm
Kiplinger’s (2015) Ten great places to retire (not San Antonio) including based on walkability:
http://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/retirement/T006-S002-great-places-to-retire-2015/index.html
Why families are choosing to raise kids in cities with walkable urban neighborhoods/suburbs:
http://www.childinthecity.eu/2016/02/16/the-suburban-shift-why-families-are-choosing-to-live-in-cities/
What any place can do to improve walkability
http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/what-your-town-can-learn-from-americas-most-walkable-suburb
Sorry but parks in subdivisions for the exclusive use of those residents are not public parks. Any park that is not on city property can be closed at the whim of the property owner whether it’s a developer or a school district. They shouldn’t count as public parks.
The report is correct in saying we could use smaller parks in walkable neighborhoods. Naturally, having to drive 1/4 mile or whatever the distance would be to Hardberger Park wouldn’t count. One of their measures was walkability to and from a park. I lived in Manhattan and there are plenty of public pocket parks.
I’m not sure comparing Manhatten to San Antonio is fair. Manhattan is a small island, even one park would be considered walking distance for everyone on the island.
Something missing from readily available information at Parks website, VIA website, and at the Parks themselves (including brochures) is information about accessibility by mass transit, VIA. I walk the one mile from my home to Hardberger Park. But it is easily accessible on two VIA routes (534 & 97), access from across north central, and access from downtown.
If you have to get in a car to drive to a park or buy some milk that is not “true” urban living.
San Pedro Park, Roosevelt Park and Brackenridge are still the crown jewels of SA’s public parks. Sorry Hardberger and MacArthur.