NYC Outspends Other Cities On Parks By Nearly $1.5 Billion

NEW YORK, NY – New York City spends much more on parks than any other urban area in the nation, shelling out $1,875,741,578 on greenspaces during the 2017 fiscal year.

That's $1,478,308,490 more than the next biggest spender which is Los Angeles, according to a report from The Trust For Public Land, which advocates for creating parks and protecting land for people.

When the size of the population is taken into account, New York City spends $216 per resident on parks. That puts it in ninth place in the nation for the amount it spends per person. Of that, $160,384,047 comes from private funding sources.

New York City has 40,016 acres of parkland in its boundaries, with 97 percent of its population living within a 10 minute walk, the report says.

The total spending number includes both operating and capital spending of all park agencies. Parks in that number could be city park systems, portions of a county park system, state park systems within city limits and even national parks. It does not include things like professional stadiums, museums, aquariums and cemeteries.

The Trust For Public Land said that public spending on parks increased 6 percent nationwide, from $7.1 billion in 2017 to $7.5 billion. When accounting for $500 million in public/private park partnerships, that number totaled $8 billion in the last fiscal year.

That’s good news, Charlie McCabe, director of the organization, told Patch. It suggests cities are slowly recovering from the recession, which really hit park systems hard starting in about 2008.

“Unfortunately, park systems are among the first things to be cut in a downturn,” said McCabe. “Usually it’s a struggle for cities to think about what’s most important to them, and they end up thinking fire, police and EMS are the most important. Parks become less of a priority for a number of cities.”

When it comes to an individual city, the number to pay close attention to is spending per resident, McCabe noted. Typically cities that see a lot of growth in parks spending also see a lot of income and growing revenue from taxes, fees and services.

Here are the top 10 large cities for total park spending per resident:

San Francisco, California: $314
Washington, D.C.: $284
Seattle, Washington: $279
Minneapolis, Minnesota: $270
Irvine, California: $243
Plano, Texas: $237
Portland, Oregon: $224
Arlington, Virginia: $217
New York, New York: $216
New Orleans, Louisiana, $192

McCabe said there are a couple reasons that residents in some cities get more money than others. Once a city has a successful park system and is committed to keeping it alive, it will seek out other sources of funding to help grow and improve the park systems. In addition to tax revenue, this money often comes from commercial fees, such as from restaurants, events and even bond revenue. Prosperous cities generally do well. Others often struggle.

“In some cases, the cities that are doing well get better and the cities that are struggling still struggle, which is kind of a challenge for cities on the lower end of the spectrum.” McCabe lamented.

Here are the 10 cities that spend the least per resident:

100. Stockton, California: $14
99. Toledo, Ohio: $16
98. Oakland, California: $19
97. Hialeah, Florida: $25
96. Jacksonville, Florida: $30
95. Jersey City, New Jersey: $33
94. Fresno, California: $34
93. Santa Ana, California: $37
92. Indianapolis, Indiana: $37
91. El Paso, Texas: $38
90. Glendale, Arizona: $39

Correction: Data for this story was provided by The Trust for Public Land, a highly regarded non-profit group that advocates for parks creation and land protection. Following publication of this story, the trust contacted Patch to correct data that it had been provided by Portland, Oregon. Corrected, Portland moved from first in overall spending per resident to eighth among large cities A separate data error regarding Tampa, Florida, moved it out of the top 10 large cities for total park spending per resident. This version of the story reflects those changes.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Spencer Platt / Getty Images