Planning and Community Health Research Center

Parks and Recreation

Parks, recreation facilities, and open spaces provide a multitude of benefits to both people and the natural environment.

Parks include small neighborhood and pocket parks, trails, greenways, water shorelines, large planned urban and regional parks, and forested areas within and surrounding cities. Recreation facilites take in playgrounds, ball fields, tennis courts, and gymnasiums. Open spaces can be as diverse as agricultural land, forests, gardens, arboretums, and institutional grounds.

They provide people with formal and informal gathering places to be physically active, socialize, relax, build community, and connect with the natural world. They make urban areas more inviting for living, working and relaxing. And, they provide environmental benefits, such as stormwater management, erosion control, buffering between built and natural environments, and wildlife habitat.

Planners play an important role in ensuring that these spaces are safe and secure; well preserved, designed, constructed, or maintained; socially and culturally relevant; appropriately and equitably located in all neighborhoods; and physically accessible.