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Figure 2.6: Showing low green space provision per child to argue for a new neighborhood park
The image shows that Frogtown has less than 5 percent green space and a tiny amount of acreage for each of its youth.
(source: Sarah Horowitz, Fulbright Scholar, China)
Another good example in visualization comes from Baltimore in 2012 where a local non-profit, Safe and Sound,
produced evidence that clearly showed that the city compares poorly with several other similar U.S. cities and
with the national median in terms of spending on rec centers and parks per resident. 13 Their aim was to provide
background for debates around mayoral plans to close or privatize one-third of the city’s recreation centers, as
well as six public pools. The graph was concise and powerful in terms of setting up context for the decisions.
13
Also of interest here is ParkScore, a comprehensive rating system to measure how well the 50 largest U.S. cities are meeting the need for parks http://parkscore.tpl.
org/about.php. ParkScore ratings are based equally on three factors: park access, which measures the percentage of residents living within a 10-minute walk of a park
(approximately 1/2-mile); park size, which is based on a city’s median park size and the percentage of total city area dedicated to parks; and services and investment,
which combines the number of playgrounds per 10,000 city residents and per capita park spending. The Minneapolis public parks were included in 2013 as the list was
extended from the 40 largest to the 50 largest; it took top honors earning the first perfect “5 park bench” rating from the non-profit organization.
37 | The New Barn-Raising