Urban parks are essential elements of urban landscapes. They provide vital ecosystem services and recreational opportunities, enhance people’s health and well-being, and improve environmental health and biodiversity. However, access to urban parks is not always equal for different race and ethnic groups. Our study shows racial and ethnic disparities within cities across the United States in access to higher quality urban parks and their ecosystem service benefits and amenities.

Defining Accessibility and Quality

The discussion began with asking the questions ‘how do we define accessibility?’ and ‘how do we define the quality of urban parks?’ To answer these questions, we utilized the Trust for Public Land’s ParkServe Database, which catalogs parks managed for public use across the U.S. This dataset includes information about the park’s location, amenities, and its ‘walkshed’, which is the neighborhood within a 10-minute walk of the park. We focused on parks in urban areas (including 122,988 parks across the United States) and demographics in park walksheds. One of the unique aspects of this study is that we recognize that both physical distance and park characteristics matter for determining who can most easily access park benefits. We evaluated park characteristics that capture social, environmental, and health amenities, including: trails, playgrounds, water features, tree canopy cover, heat mitigation, and noise levels. All of these amenities play important roles in providing quality experiences to park visitors, opportunities for community engagement, and physical health. This is the first study we know of that examines ethnoracial differences in parks’ ability to provide respite from urban heat and noise pollution. We calculated average surface temperature during summer months using Landsat 8 satellite imagery, which allowed us to assess how well parks mitigate heat compared to surrounding urban areas. Similarly, noise data from the National Parks Service allowed for a comprehensive understanding of how parks can act as buffers against urban noise.

Our Approach and Key Findings

The study aimed to highlight disparities in access to high-quality urban parks. We wanted to assess if people from different racial and ethnic groups were overrepresented or underrepresented in neighborhoods surrounding parks (park walksheds) compared to the groups’ representation in the broader urban areas where the parks are located. To do this, we used data from the 2020 US Census and aggregated population counts by race and Hispanic ethnicity to the park walksheds. We calculated representation levels in each park walkshed by dividing the share of the total population who identified with each ethnoracial group in the park walkshed by the share of the population in that same group in the urban area within which the park is located. We could then examine those representation levels for all parks and for parks with different amenity characteristics across different regions of the United States. We used regression methods to assess the relationship between racial/ethnic representation and park amenities to achieve a comprehensive understanding of how the demographic composition of park walksheds correlates to the quality and quantity of park amenities. 

The results indicated significant disparities in park access and amenities based on racial and ethnic representation in walksheds. We found that people of color (Black, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian/Alaska Native) across the U.S. have less access to higher-quality urban parks and the ecosystem services they provide compared to the Non-Hispanic White population. There were some regional differences, but these findings were mostly true across the United States. Parks in predominantly White neighborhoods tended to have more trees and more water features, better heat mitigation, and lower noise levels. There were fewer parks in neighborhoods with more Black and Hispanic residents, and those parks tended to be hotter and have less tree canopy and fewer amenities. While such parks may offer important gathering and recreational spaces, they lack important environmental health benefits. 

What do we do now?

Urban areas continue to face challenges related to population growth, resource usage, heat waves, noise pollution, environmental degradation, and social inequity. By prioritizing equitable access to high-quality parks, cities might both enhance the quality of life for their residents and contribute to broader sustainability goals. Inclusive green spaces that benefit everyone in their communities could be helpful from many aspects. The first step to creating a more sustainable and inclusive urban environment starts with recognizing the gaps that we’ll have to reduce together.