SF Named Top 10 in USA for Its City Parks
By Jeff Ballinger, Bay City News
Bay Area cities rose on the annual ParkScore index, an annual study released Wednesday night by the San Francisco-based nonprofit The Trust for Public Land that ranks park systems in the 100 largest U.S. cities.
Four Bay Area cities made the list again this time, with three of them rising higher than last year’s report. San Francisco rose two spots to sixth, Fremont climbed five places to 28th, Oakland rose seven to rank 44th and San Jose held steady at 36th.
Although the local cities rank high in spending and in dog parks per capita, they performed below national averages in a new measurement of park equity.
The top five spots are held, in order, by Washington, D.C.; St. Paul, Minnesota; Minneapolis; Arlington, Virginia; and Chicago. Read the full report.
San Francisco ranks high, in part, because it is only one of two cities on the list where all residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park. The other is Boston.
San Francisco also leads the nation in park investment, spending $357 per resident, nearly four times the $96 average of the top 100 cities. Increased spending on parks helped Fremont and Oakland move up the ranks, according to the report. Fremont’s spending went up to $125 per resident, up from $114. Oakland nearly doubled spending to $109 per resident, up from $65 the year before.
All four Bay Area cities on the list also scored high because of their dog parks, with San Francisco again on top of the list of all cities. The average for the 100 cities is 1.2 per 100,000 residents. San Francisco has 4.2 per 100,000 residents, closely followed by Oakland at 3.8, Fremont at 2.2 and San Jose at 1.3.
Read more at the Trust of Public Lands’ 2021 ParkScore Index.
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