The Cleveland Metroparks are kinda the crown jewel of our fair city (along with Matt Fish’s contribution to sandwiches). In other words, don’t even try to tell us our green space is any less than the greatest in the WORLD.
The Trust for Public Land, however, just stepped over the line.
Tossing Cleveland a middle-of-the-road No. 25 ranking out of the 50 biggest cities in the U.S., the Trust ensured that our city’s devotion to parks got relegated to company such as Kansas City and Detroit. Wh-Wh-Whaat?
It seems that the biggest barriers to Minneapolis-level success are access to parks (about 80 percent in Cleveland) and green space proportion (a little more than 6 percent).
Nevertheless, the Trust did round up a handful of interesting stats:
– City area: 49,726 acres
– Median park size: 3.59 acres
– Park land as % of city area: 6.3 %
– Spending per resident: $88.00
– Playgrounds per 10,000: 2.3
– Population density: 8.0 per acre
– Park acreage: 3,130 acres
– People served per park acre: 97
– Oldest park: Settlers Landing, est. 1796
– Largest park: Rockefeller Park, 130 acres
– Most-visited park: Luke Easter Park
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2013.
The Center for City Park Excellence agrees that Cleveland Metroparks is one of the truly outstanding park agencies in the country. Unfortunately, only 1,061 acres out of their 22,000 acres are actually in the city of Cleveland, and the city is what we score through ParkScore. (This Metroparks acreage within Cleveland is slated to increase with the transfer of the Lakefront Parks from the state.) We’re committed to helping the city of Cleveland also get the park benefits that the suburbs now receive — preferably within a 10-minute walking distance of every resident. Since greater Cleveland is a well-known example of “sprawl without growth,” we think that a stronger urban park system can help reinvigorate the center of the region and promote infill, starting even with the neighborhoods around Public Square.
–Peter Harnik