Chicago ranks just shy of the top 10 U.S. cities with the best park systems, according to a new list released Wednesday.
Chicago ranked 11th, tied with Seattle, up four spots from last year’s finish in The Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore Index, which measures how cities are meeting residents’ needs for parks — including park access, size, financial investment and amenities.
“Chicago has been for many decades on the cutting edge of park development and continues to be,” said Adrian Benepe, senior vice president and director of city park development for The Trust for Public Land. “Things like Millennium Park, Maggie Daley Park, the Riverwalk and The 606 and recent improvement to Navy Pier are all cutting-edge projects.”
The Trust for Public Land partnered with the city and served as project manager for the development of The 606, an elevated trail that connects to four parks in Bucktown, Wicker Park, Humboldt Park and Logan Square.
This year’s bump for Chicago is mainly due to the inclusion of school playgrounds and athletic fields open to the public outside of school hours, which increases park access, Benepe said. The term parks was broadly defined to include large parks — like Lincoln Park and Grant Park — small neighborhood parks, trails like The 606 and playgrounds.
The Trust for Public Land said about 97 percent of Chicagoans live within a 10-minute walk or half a mile of a park, above the national average of 66 percent. “Chicago really hits it out of the park on a 10-minute walk to a park,” Benepe said.
Topping the list of the 100 largest U.S. cities with the best park system is Minneapolis followed by St. Paul, Minn., and San Francisco. Rounding out the top 10 are Washington, D.C.; Portland, Ore.; Arlington, Va.; Irvine, Calif.; New York; Madison, Wis.; and Cincinnati.
Chicago’s parks are widely dispersed throughout the city despite a common complaint that the South Side lacks park amenities, according to Benepe. It’s hard to find park deserts, he said, but improvements could be made in areas on the Northwest Side near O’Hare Airport and on the Southwest Side near Midway Airport.
The city also received high marks for parks spending on operations and capital projects. Chicago spent $173 per person, more than double the national median of $80, based on three-year average spending by city, county, state and federal agencies.
For amenities, Chicago has more basketball hoops and playgrounds per 10,000 residents than the national median. The city also earned points for its recreation centers, including senior centers and field houses.
Recently, the city has made strides toward improving playgrounds and field houses. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s $42 million Chicago Plays! initiative to install or renovate more than 300 playgrounds across the city wrapped up last year. Last month, the mayor announced plans to use $26 million in state grants and Park District funds to restore aging field houses.
Chicago came in about average on the parks index for the availability of off-leash dog parks, yet lower than many West Coast cities. Some residents are calling for dog parks in South Side neighborhoods, as the majority of the city’s 22 dog parks and dog beaches are clustered on the North Side.
While Chicago scored high in park accessibility, it scored low in the category of park size. The median park size in Chicago is about 1.4 acres, smaller than the national median of 5 acres.
About 10 percent of Chicago’s land mass is given over to parks, slightly above the national median of 9.3 percent.
“That’s a hard one to fix because Chicago is an older city like New York and Boston and on the edge of a lake,” Benepe said.
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