Mayors Expect Residents Will Spend More Time in Outdoor Public Spaces, But Few Using Pandemic as Opportunity to Reimagine These Areas, According to New Survey - Seite 3

“BIPoC communities should not only have equitable access to parks, but they should feel safe while using them. But we know that this is not always the case. In 2018 police were called on a Black family having a barbeque at Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, and again in 2020 a woman reported a Black man who was bird-watching in Central Park in New York,” said Otis Rolley III, Senior Vice President of The Rockefeller Foundation’s U.S. Equity and Economic Opportunity Initiative. “The Rockefeller Foundation is excited that the latest Menino Survey of Mayors sheds light on how U.S. Mayors can rethink parks and green spaces while centering equity.”

The Trust for Public Land’s data suggests mayors’ may be somewhat optimistic in their perceptions of parks proximity, as nationwide, 100 million people, including 28 million kids, do not have access to a quality park within a 10-minute walk from home. Among the mayors interviewed for the Menino Survey, 64% of their residents—in other words most, though by no means all—have a park within a 10-minute walk of their home. Mayors’ perceptions of inequity in parks quality aligns with The Trust for Public Land’s data, as parks serving primarily Black, Latino, Indigenous and Native American, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and other communities of color are half the size and serve five times more people per acre than parks in primarily white neighborhoods.

Looking across census regions, our analysis of The Trust for Public Land’s ParkServe data shows residents in Southern cities are significantly less likely to live within a 10-minute walk of a park or greenspace, while residents in the Northeast—where cities are typically more compact—are more likely to live in close proximity to a park. On average, 81% of residents in Northeast cities enjoy walkable access to a park compared to just 44% of residents of Southern cities.

Some Southern mayors seem to be aware that they may offer more limited parks access to residents; 58% of them agreed or strongly agreed that residents have easy walking access to parks compared to 79% of mayors in the Northeast, and 76% of mayors in both the Midwest and the West.

The survey, named after the late Mayor of Boston Thomas Menino and supported by Citi and The Rockefeller Foundation, is an annual project to understand the most pressing needs and policy priorities of America’s mayors from large and mid-size (over 75,000 residents) cities. In 2020, The Trust for Public Land joined Boston University as an additional partner to field a series of questions related to parks and the public realm. In total, 130 mayors from 38 states were interviewed throughout the summer of 2020, providing a representative sample of mayors and cities nationally. Past findings reports from the 2020 Survey covered COVID-19 Recovery, Policing and Protests, and the 2020 Census.