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Old 06-05-2013, 10:52 AM
 
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Interesting study, hopefully TX cities can improve:

Group rates Minneapolis as top U.S. city park system
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Old 06-05-2013, 11:05 AM
 
Location: North Texas
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Campeador View Post
Interesting study, hopefully TX cities can improve:

Group rates Minneapolis as top U.S. city park system
Dallas tied with Austin about halfway down the top 50 list.

I'd hate to see the parks in the bottom-ranked cities. Dallas's parks aren't all that great.
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Old 06-05-2013, 11:12 AM
 
Location: Underneath the Pecan Tree
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I'd think Houston would rank higher. I think it has one of the better park systems in Texas.
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Old 06-05-2013, 11:22 AM
 
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Originally Posted by blkgiraffe View Post
I'd think Houston would rank higher. I think it has one of the better park systems in Texas.
Unfortunately, that doesn't amount to much; TX cities aren't even in the top 25. I've been to all of the top 10 cities and they are head and shoulders above what I've seen here.
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Old 06-05-2013, 11:28 AM
 
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I will say there are some amazing parks here in San Diego... it didn't surprise me it was ranked 9. So are the parks in Texas dirty or something? Or just not much to them? Why are they ranked lower?
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Old 06-05-2013, 11:33 AM
 
Location: Northeast Texas
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I guess people in Texas don't really use the park like other cities do.
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Old 06-05-2013, 11:33 AM
 
Location: Willowbend/Houston
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If suburbs county, I think Plano would score highly on a list like this but I assumed it wasnt ranked. Plano's park system is excellent.
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Old 06-05-2013, 11:36 AM
 
Location: Austin, TX
15,289 posts, read 35,740,145 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gamewiz View Post
I will say there are some amazing parks here in San Diego... it didn't surprise me it was ranked 9. So are the parks in Texas dirty or something? Or just not much to them? Why are they ranked lower?
It looks like these criteria were used:
- park access, which measures the percentage of residents living within about a half-mile of a park;
- park size, based on a city's median park size and the percentage of total city area dedicated to parks; and
- services and investment, a combination of the number of playgrounds per 10,000 city residents and per capita spending.

Ah, found it, the actual score composition for Austin:
http://parkscore.tpl.org/city.php?city=Austin

Sort of glancing through this, it looks like Austin has gone for big parks (max score) over number of parks (low score). The number of parks being low is kind of a triple whammy, because that means access (people with 1/2 mile) will be lower and the total number of playground will be lower.

Additionally, it looks like lower income is better 'served' than medium income, which is in turn better served than high income.

Anyway, with the very low spending per capita, it seems we got a deal . In fact, if we somehow spent a lot more money on the exact same parks, we would have scored a lot better. I obviously don't get to all the parks in the city, but the ones I do go to seem to be well maintained and generally well equipped.

Last edited by Trainwreck20; 06-05-2013 at 12:13 PM..
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Old 06-05-2013, 11:38 AM
 
Location: North Texas
24,561 posts, read 40,385,745 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gamewiz View Post
I will say there are some amazing parks here in San Diego... it didn't surprise me it was ranked 9. So are the parks in Texas dirty or something? Or just not much to them? Why are they ranked lower?
I was born and raised in Dallas and I remember parks being kind of 'meh' when I was a kid; some had playground equipment but it was scorching hot in summertime without many places to hide from the heat or to even get a sip of water. Sometimes the water fountains worked, if you were lucky, but they squirted out hot water. I burned my butt on hot metal slides many times.

There were few pools to speak of and even if a park had a pool, it was usually not in use. The summers here are absolutely brutal so even if you have a park with a great playground, tennis courts, etc. a lot of people won't use it because it's just too freaking hot so maybe the city doesn't see the point of pouring a lot of money into something people aren't going to use...chicken vs egg....that's my $0.02 anyway.

We went to private pools to swim...either a neighbor's pool or one at a private rec center or country club. Those facilities were always far nicer.
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Old 06-05-2013, 12:04 PM
 
Location: The Magnolia City
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There's not much that's extraordinary about our parks. I freely admit that.
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