If you don't count, your park won't count: estimating the number of city park users can be difficult, but is important to receiving funding

Parks & Recreation, June, 2005 by Peter Harnik, Amy Kimball

How many people visit the parks in your city? Do they go once a year for a festival, or every day to walk the dog? Do they prefer a park with a playground or one with benches by the lake? What would make their experiences better?

With a few exceptions, your mayor does not know the answers to these questions. The parks department may have calculated how many people came for that big summertime concert, and it almost certainly knows how many folks sign up for yoga classes, softball leagues or rounds of golf. But those paying customers are only a tiny fraction of residents and visitors who make general use of the entire park system. The million-dollar question is what is the system's "regular" usage--walkers, picnickers, jugglers, basketballers, readers, Frisbee throwers, playground climbers, runners, tennis players, cyclists, boombox listeners, kite flyers, skaters, sunbathers, bird watchers, people watchers, squirrel feeders--on a sunny Saturday in June, a grey week-day in November and everything in between?

Part of the problem is that it isn't easy. This isn't like a movie theater with tickets, a county fair with a turn-stile, or even a national park with an entry booth. How do you count pedestrians coming freely into a park system from an infinity of entrances and engaging in a multitude of activities spread across thousands of acres?

The other part of the problem is that many park managers aren't all that interested in knowing the answer. A profit-making business counts its customers (and surveys them, which is something different) so that it can make a variety of decisions that might increase its profitability. Most park managers feel that because they aren't in the profit business, counting is an expense and a headache that they don't need.

This attitude is wrong. The concepts of "profit" and "investment" in the private sector are matched by the concepts of "benefit" and "appropriation" in the public sector. Getting a sufficient appropriation from the city council is as dependent on strong numbers, as its equivalent on the private side. Alan Tate in his book Great City Parks writes, "User counts are the only form of profit and loss account that exists in park management. It is an object lesson in the patient, persistent and professional application of sound business principles in the public realm." Numbers help managers assess the success of operation, give clues as to how they can perform better and provide benchmarks for excellence and goals to achieve. Numbers can even be profitable in unexpected ways--in Portland, Ore., the Nike Corporation has pledged a substantial sponsorship contribution to the parks department if the city can demonstrate that it has doubled attendance at its parks.

Here's the clincher: checking the verb "count" in the thesaurus yields four telling synonyms: "enumerate," "estimate," "have influence" and "be important." Important things are tabulated; things that are unimportant aren't. If park users are ever to have influence, we need to start counting.

Counting vs. Surveying

Counting and surveying park users are not the same thing. Counting is rigorous, quantitative and essentially looks back at the past; surveying represents a softer; qualitative look into the future. Both are important means, not ends; they are tools for better park management, but counting is the more telling. It's like the difference between the pre-election polls and the election itself, or the Associated Press poll of college football coaches and the bowl games. Ironically, it's easier to survey than to count.

Writers and researchers on urban park systems have been calling for greater user data collection for some time. For instance, the Trust for Public Land's The Excellent City Park System identified "user satisfaction" as one of the main tenets of a successful parks program. Knowledge of how, when and where people use parks is essential in guiding managers in directing staff time, funding and many other decisions.

Surveys

Surveys are often administered through the mail or telephone, or occasionally in the parks themselves. In a study of the nation's 50 largest cities, the Trust for Public Land found 11 that conducted user surveys, most of them in conjunction with their strategic planning process. The most frequently asked questions involved suggestions for new facilities, and almost every survey asked for an overall rating of park and recreation services.

Surveys are good mechanisms for getting need, satisfaction and trend data for parks. In comparison with physical counts, surveys are also fairly easy and quick to administer, and they can be relatively inexpensive, particularly if they are a subcomponent of a full-scale resident satisfaction survey undertaken by a city auditor department (as is done in Portland, Ore.).

In contrast to user counts, surveys also have the advantage of being able to incorporate non-users into the data collection and analysis. For instance, information about park users and non-users can be compared to census bureau information about the community at large to determine if all ethnic and age groups are being represented. Chris Walker, senior researcher at the Urban Institute, suggests using census data from the zip codes of users questioned in an interception survey. Computerized geographical information systems (GIS) can also be used to find the demographics of a quarter-mile buffer (or more or less) around the park. (For more information about GIS, see the article on page 52.)