14. Park and Open Space Resources in the Green Visions Plan Area

JANUARY 2007 14. Park and Open Space Resources in the Green Visions Plan Area Chona Sister Jennifer Wolch John P. Wilson Alison Linder Mona Seymour Jason Byrne Jennifer Swift Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank the park audit team – Michael Gill-Branion, Brigid McManama, Matthew Merrill, C.J. Potter, Brian Selogie, Scott Widmann, and Monte Wylie. We are grateful to Christine Ryan for her assistance in developing the GIS database and sampling strategy and Shannon Clements Parry for editorial assistance. We thank the Green Visions Plan Recreational Open Space Science Advisory Committee for their guidance. Lastly, we acknowledge the financial support of the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the Baldwin Hills Conservancy, and the California Coastal Conservancy. Prepared for: San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy 900 South Fremont Avenue, Alhambra, California 91802-1460 Preferred Citation: Sister, C., J. Wolch, J. Wilson, A. Linder, M. Seymour, J. Byrne, and J. Swift. 2007. The Green Visions Plan for 21st Century Southern California. 14. Park and Open Space Resources in the Green Visions Plan Area, University of Southern California GIS Research Laboratory and Center for Sustainable Cities, Los Angeles, California. This report was printed on recycled paper. The mission of the Green Visions Plan for 21st Century Southern California is to offer a guide to habitat conservation, watershed health and recreational open space for the Los Angeles metropolitan region. The Plan will also provide decision support tools to nurture a living green matrix for southern California. Our goals are to protect and restore natural areas, restore natural hydrological function, promote equitable access to open space, and maximize support via multiple-use facilities. The Plan is a joint venture between the University of Southern California and the San Gabriel and lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, Coastal Conservancy, and Baldwin Hills Conservancy. www.greenvisionsplan.net CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5 1 INTRODUCTION 6 2 METHODS 8 2.1 The Green Visions Study Area and its Subregions 8 2.2 Methodological Approach 12 2.3 Systematic Audit of Green-space Environments (SAGE) 16 2.4 Field Audits 18 2.5 Web Audits 21 3 ASSESSING THE PARK AUDIT TOOLS 23 3.1 Field Audit Reliability and Quality 23 3.2 Agreement between Field and Web Data 25 4 PARK ASSETS IN THE GREEN VISIONS PLAN AREA 28 4.1 The Subregions 34 4.2 GVP-Los Angeles County 95 5 SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION 101 5.1 The Green Visions Plan Area’s Park and Recreational Open Space Assets 101 5.2 Subregional Contrasts in Park and Recreational Open Space 103 5.3 Population Characteristics in Relation to Park and Open Space Resources 106 6 FUTURE DIRECTIONS 109 7 LITERATURE CITED 110 APPENDIX A: PARKS IN THE GREEN VISIONS PLAN AREA 112 EXECUTIVE summary This Technical Publication reports on a major assessment of parks and recreational open space assets in the Green Visions Plan (GVP) study area. The assessment was administered during the summer of 2005, fol- lowed by extensive data analysis conducted through summer of 2006. Two types of assessment were carried out: a comprehensive audit of websites describing park and recreational open spaces in the study area, and a field audit conducted on a sample of these park spaces. The audits included city and county parks, regional and state parks and recreation areas, federal recreation areas, public beaches, and state and national forests offering opportunities for camping and hiking. The audits recorded characteristics of each site such as basic infrastructure, facilities and amenities for sports and active recreation as well as leisure and passive recreation, and level of maintenance and other indicators of condition and safety. Landscape features present at the park sites were also noted, as a means to understand the potential for development of habitat restoration and watershed protection projects. Audit results indicate that the GVP region contains over 1,800 recreational parks and open spaces. These parks vary from the large numbers of neighborhood parks with swings and slides, to community parks with sports fields and swimming pools, to regional parks with winding trails and scenic vistas, as well as expansive open spaces consisting of national forests, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges. These parks assets are extensive and constitute a major resource for southern California, its communities and its residents. Together, these parks cover a total area of over 1.2 million acres, and range in size from the small pocket parks of less than an acre in size, to the expansive National Forests, which cover over one million acres. The large open spaces form a series of habitat linkages critical to the region’s ecosystems; however, most parks are relatively small. In some parts of the region, few large parks are to be found. While park assets are extensive, these resources are unevenly distributed across the region, and are not always readily accessible by residents. Only a quarter of the region’s parks have transit access overall, al- though in some parts of the region a third to over a half of parks appear to be transit accessible. Generally, older communities of the region are denser and have smaller parks, while suburban areas that were devel- oped more recently, have larger average park sizes. Older and lower income communities also tend to have parks facilities that are more likely poorly maintained. Interestingly, while highly-priced real estate properties close to urban–wildland interfaces have extensive park and open space acreage, on average, these areas tend to have fewer facilities. Different parts of the region also vary in terms of the types of park facilities and amenities they offer, the landscape features present within park boundaries, and the potential of parks to serve habitat restoration and watershed protection purposes. The condition of park infrastructure and landscaping, which affects perceived safety, also varies across the region. While some parts of the region tend to have a traditional ‘turf and trees’ parkland aesthetic, a good portion of the region’s open spaces also constitute an important opportunity for habitat restoration and watershed projects designed to increase infiltration of runoff and groundwater re- charge. 5 1 INTRODUCTION Parks and open spaces afford people a range of personal, socio-cultural, and economic benefits. For example, by offering opportunities for both passive and active recreation, well-designed parks and open spaces promote a more active lifestyle that is key to a person’s health (Paffenberg and Lee 1996, Spangler 1997, Jackson and Kochtitzky 2001). Public open spaces can also be seen as “mixing valves” that provide spaces for people to interact, thereby decreasing insularity and enhancing a sense of community (Leinberger and Berens 1997, Garvin and Berens 2001). In highly urbanized areas, parks and open spaces can provide eco- system services, for example, mitigating urban heat, pollution, and flooding (Pincetl et al. 2003). Parks may offer direct economic value to communities by increasing real estate property values (Burgess et al. 1988, Lutzenhiser and Netusil 2001, Pincetl et al. 2003). Additionally, even if difficult to quantify, perhaps one of the important benefits of parks are the “intangibles”, such as the sense of well being they impart to residents, even to those who rarely use parks (Cranz 1982). Los Angeles and its surrounding urban region have long been characterized as a park-poor urban area compared to other cities. A recent study by The Trust for Public Land (2006) found that Jacksonville, Florida has the most park acreage, with almost 98,000 acres of parks and preserves, including water preserves. In addi- tion, when measured on an acres-per-capita basis, Jacksonville also ranks first, having 126 acres of parkland for every 1,000 residents. When parks were treated as a share of city area, the leader was Albuquerque, where more than 25% of land area is public open space. Other cities allocating a large percentage of land to parks and open space include San Diego (22%), Washington, D.C. (19.7%), San Francisco (19.3%), and New York (19.1%). Cities besides Jacksonville with large amounts of park acres per capita include El Paso (44.5 acres per 1,000 residents), Austin, Texas (39.2), and Kansas City, Missouri (38.7). In contrast, the City of Los Angeles devotes 7.8 % of its total area of parks and open space (next to the bot- tom compared to other large, dense cities; Harnik, 2000). Moreover, L.A. has only 6.1 park acres per 1,000 residents on average. Of the country’s large and medium-sized cities, only New York, Chicago and Miami have lower per capita park acres. And in terms of spending, the picture is even more bleak: Los Angeles spent only $38 per capita for park budgets in 2004, compared to San Francisco ($264 per capita), Chicago ($163 per capita), or New York ($78 per capita; Trust for Public Land, 2006). A depressing picture, no doubt. But the City of Los Angeles is only one of many municipalities in the broader southern California region, and does not necessarily reflect the situation of this entire area; the City itself is large and its subareas are far from uniform. More critically, however, simple characterizations based on acreage and spending, while vital, do not capture the full story. What are the larger metropolitan region’s park and recreational open space assets? How are they distributed? What types of facilities and amenities—for sports as well as leisure—do they offer, and in what kind of condition is park infrastructure maintained? And what opportunities might our parklands offer for helping us protect natural habitat and watershed health? The present study describes existing park and open space resources in the tri-county region of the Green Visions Plan (GVP) area.

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