Vlog Overview
My return to the academy to earn a PhD after 30+ years of parks practice uncovered many (practice) realities extensively studied by researchers. This dual lens gives me a unique inside (practice)/outside (research) perspective (and visa versa) to bridge the two worlds. I will use lots of “I” and “me” to personalize my experiences, with lots of examples. I will share park development policy and practice decision-making using an academic lens (i.e., institutional theory). My practice experiences were in the Edmonton region in the 1982 to 2014 period. Each individual vlog I will call Ice Sculptures, riffing off of the Parks as Icebergs concept. Oh, and by the way, I have opinions that may or may not be popular with my planning or political colleagues. So let’s get started!
Todays Ice Sculpture - A Summary of Benefits Literature.
As a urban planning practitioner that began his parks career in 1987, I lived in two worlds simultaneously – I had one foot in the corporate/budgeting /land use/ developer world, and one foot in the community park world, working with community and internal park social actors programmers, community construction coordinators, operations staff. Each world did not understand the other. I acted as an interpreter, for each to the other. It made my life fulfilling, interesting, and at times a hellscape.
I would hear two types of statements about parks. I would hear supportive superficial statements such as “Parks make cities livable,” but with a “yabut.” Finance managers seeking to limit or eliminate tax increases would ask “Are parks a want or need? Corporate land managers and entrepreneurial elected officials valuing park lands as an economic asset only, would say “What is the highest and best use of park lands?” (Spoiler alert - not parks). One developer told me park land dedication was “theft.” I assume he meant theft of greater profits for himself. Whats an old parkie to do…Oh wait I know!
I returned to grad school in 2014 to develop the definitive tome on the importance of parks and public places. After a couple of years thrashing about the academic literature, I had an “aha” moment. There was a plethora of already available research on the benefits of parks, recreation and leisure. The issue was not lack of knowledge, but general lack of knowledge dissemination of the importance of parks beyond the superficial, particularly at key times in urban planning and municipal budgeting processes.
Below is a video summary of some of that information, followed by sources and takeaway notes.
Key Takeaways
Tempesta (2012) identified the following benefits.
1 - Physical/biological: 1.1 urban atmosphere - temperature and microclimatic effects, removal of air pollutants, emission of volatile organic compounds by trees and emissions due to tree maintenance, energy conservation in buildings and con- sequent effects on emissions from power plants; 1.2 urban hydrology; 1.3 urban noise; 1.4 urban wildlife and biodiversity; 1.5 phytoremediation.
2 - Social and economic benefits: 2.1 benefits to individuals - city aesthet- ic improvement, emotional and spiritual experiences, psychological benefits, health; 2.2 benefits to communities - sense of community, stronger ties among neighbours, greater sense of safety, more supervision of children in outdoor places, healthier patterns of children’s play, more use of neighbourhood com- mon spaces, fewer incivilities, fewer property crimes, and fewer violent crimes; 2.3 real estate values.
Harnik and Crompton (2014)
“In the politcal arena, one one good way to make an “invisible” issue visible is to frame it in economic terms. Most easily understood is the return-on-investment metric, which often serves as a common denominator to enable trade-offs among diverse programs. This does not mean that park services should be justified by their economic contributions alone. However, if no economic measure of their value is offered, they will often be discounted and mis-prioritized. After all, since the costs are easy to identify, the absence of estimated benefit badly skews any attempted calculation by elected officials and taxpayers.
Economic benefits include direct revenue, indirect revenue, cost avoidances and revenues to individuals.
Examples
Property value and taxes increased within 150 metres of a park, by a factor up to 20% (Harnik and Crompton 2014)
The value of volunteerism in Canada in 2017 totalled 2.5% of the GDP. the Oil and gas industry Canada wide contributes 5% of the countries GDP.
Taylor et al (2015)
Development of cognitive skills including executive/planning, attention, simultaneous and successive tasks, self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, communication, resilience; and/or development of social capital, trust and reciprocity; and/or identification with and attitudes towards community institutions and community-related values; and/or quest for high peer status.
These improvements all contribute to more effective mechanisms for reducing the impact of risk factors, which include biological and genetic factors, e.g. personality traits; psychological factors such as intellectual and interpersonal attributes, emotional and behaviour disorders; and social factors, arising from family, school, peer group, neighbourhood and community.
Intermediate outcomes: lower anti-social behaviour; higher pro-social behaviour; improved cognitive functioning, improved networking and community relationships and involvement (NB volunteering).
Outcomes: changes in health (including preventing chronic diseases, enhancing mental health, counteracting obesity and promoting health aging), crime and vandalism, education behaviour and achievement, and social capital.
Cited Journal Articles
Tempesta, Tiziano. “Benefits and Costs of Urban Parks: A Review.” Aestimum 67 (2012): 127-143. doi: 10.13128/Aestimum-17943. (overview of benefits)
Harnik, Peter and John Crompton. “Measuring the Total Economic Value of a Park System to a Community.” Managing Leisure 19 (2014): 188-211. doi: 10.1080/13606719.2014.885713. (overview of benefits in park investments)
Taylor, Peter, Larissa Davies, Peter Wells, Jan Gilbertson and William Tayleur. A Review of the Social Impacts of Culture and Sport. Project Report. Department for Culture, Media and Sport. 2015. Retrieved from http://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/9596 (sport physical/social benefits)
Other articles
Alberta Recreation and Parks Association. Assessing the Proximate Value of Parks and Open Space to Residential Properties in Alberta. Location: Edmonton, Alberta. 2007 Retrieved from https://arpaonline.ca/ (economic benefits)
Bower, Shannon Stunden. “The Affordances of MacKinnon Ravine: Fighting Freeways and Pursuing Government Reform in Edmonton, Alberta.” Urban History Review 44, 1-2 (2016): 59-72.
Chiesura, Anna. “The Role of Urban Parks for the Sustainable City.” Landscape and Urban Planning 68 (2004): 129-138. doi: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2003.08.003. (ecological goods and services)
Feldman, Sarah “A Reconsideration of the Justifying Values of Public Parkland.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2018. ProQuest Number 10745974
Kaz ́mierczak, Aleksandra. “The Contribution of Local Parks to Neighborhood Social Ties.” Landscape and Urban Planning 109 (2013) 31–44. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2012.05.007 (social benefits)
Morimito, Yukihiro. “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Urban Areas for Smart Adaptation to Climate Change: Do you Kyoto?” Landscape Ecology Engineering 7 (2011): 9-16. doi: 10.1007/s11355-010-0140-1. (ecological goods and services)
Ochoa, Paulina Cecilia Retamales and PearlAnn Reichwein. “A Healthy and Contented Band”: The Gyro Club and Playgrounds in Edmonton Urban Reform, 1921-1944. Sport History Review 45 (2014): 96-122. doi:10.1123/shr.2014-0026.
Wollenberg, James, Rasul A. Mowatt, Craig M. Ross and Mick Renneisen. “Components of Partnership Agreements in Municipal Parks and Recreation.” Managing Leisure 18, no. 2 (2013): 135-151. doi: 10.1080/13606719.2013.752212.