More Inclusive Parks Planning: Park Quality and Preferences for Park Access and Amenities

Abstract

Parks are increasingly viewed as places that prompt environmental justice analysis. While these studies have focused on inequalities in access to parks and amenities within parks, we offer a third important topic of study: the opinions and preferences of minorities with regards to park usage. We link empirical environmental justice analysis on parks with the core environmental justice belief that marginalized communities must have a voice in planning processes. Using data from two surveys conducted in Houston, Texas, we analyze the park preferences of these communities. Results show that park users in majority-minority neighborhoods primarily wish to see better park amenities, such as more and revitalized infrastructure, enhanced maintenance, and a safer environment, but are less concerned with increasing or improving connections between parks and neighborhoods. Further, the limited support for improved access to parks is contingent on park quality such that higher quality parks are associated with more support for increased access. As urban park systems in Houston and across the United States increasingly turn toward connected infrastructure such as linear greenways, our results portend that the success of such measures in majority-minority communities may rely on first rehabilitating existing parks. Overall, we highlight the importance of integrating community voices into parks planning.

Introduction

Recent studies on environmental justice issues have examined environmental negatives, such as exposure to toxic chemicals or proximity to hazardous waste facilities,¹ but far less research has focused on environmental “positives,” such as parks and green spaces. Parks are public spaces that provide an opportunity for recreational activities including physical exercise, social events, and relaxation. Potential benefits of parks include improved public health, increased property values in the surrounding area, and stronger communities.² Unequal opportunity to attain these benefits of parks is increasingly being recognized as an environmental injustice.³

Several studies have explored differences in the distribution of parks and services across racial and income groups.⁴ This research primarily examines disparities in access to parks and amenities in parks, but does not shed light on the voices of minority populations with regards to parks. In this article, we examine whether black and Hispanic respondents surveyed in marginalized neighborhoods in Houston, Texas have differing views toward parks policies compared to a different sample overly comprised of whites and affluent residents. Accordingly, we stress the importance of inclusivity in both parks planning and research design. This research also analyzes what these voices have to say about two prevailing issues in the literature: access and amenities.

Several studies found, contrary to their predictions, that minorities had greater or equal access to parks in terms of distance.⁵ Despite closer geographic proximity to parks, minorities face barriers that limit park access, sometimes called “social access” barriers.⁶ While minorities live in closer proximity to a higher number of parks, whites have access to more park acres than blacks.⁷ Moreover, the metric of access considered can lead to differing findings. For example, minorities are not disadvantaged compared to whites on the issue of walkability, but on other metrics—such as access to large parks and access for younger populations—minority populations have less social access to parks.⁸ Taken together, research on park access suggests that while minority populations travel shorter distances to parks, other barriers, such as park size and congestion, compromise park effectiveness.

Differences are not limited to access, but also exist when considering park quality. Studies have also found that parks that serve majority-minority neighborhoods and/or low income neighborhoods are of lower quality and have fewer amenities than those in white and/or more affluent neighborhoods.⁹ Specific issues include a greater number of safety concerns,¹⁰ lower quality infrastructure,¹¹ and fewer recreational programs.¹² Holifield and Williams found that parks “friends” associations—private groups providing funding and volunteer support for a specific park—create higher quality parks in the Milwaukee area, but that friends groups are disproportionately present in affluent, white neighborhoods and thereby contribute to racial inequality in parks amenities.¹³ The emerging research on park amenities issues finds that low income and minority populations are disadvantaged compared to higher income and white populations.

These two primary foci in the literature—access and amenities—speak to barriers faced by lower-income and minority groups, but not to these populations' preferences for improvements. A core tenet of environmental justice research is that communities subject to environmental inequalities should have a greater voice in political processes, and that organizing in the face of environmental degradation can sometimes achieve success.¹⁴ The nascent literature on environmental justice in parks, however, has yet to consider the importance of prioritizing the voices of disadvantaged communities. To our knowledge, this is the first study that specifically uses an environmental justice framework to study park preferences of disadvantaged communities.

In order to investigate this topic we employ a pair of research questions: 1) How can resident preferences in marginalized communities make parks planning processes more inclusive? 2) What improvements do these residents favor? Better amenities or better access? To examine these questions, we analyze two surveys conducted in Houston, Texas, the first a convenience sample of city residents that yielded a biased sample, and the second a supplemental survey targeting three economically disadvantaged neighborhoods of the city with primarily black and Hispanic residents to address biases in the former survey.

Houston Parks and Future Planning

Houston's park system, like that of many cities, has struggled with tight budgets and often is a target for financial cuts.¹⁵ The Trust for Public Land estimates that less than half of Houston's population is within walking distance of a park. Meanwhile, funding to try to address parks issues is not readily available. While smaller nearby cities like Austin and San Antonio spend around $100 per capita on parks, larger cities such as Houston and Dallas spend half that amount.¹⁶

Recently, large infusions of funds from public and private sources are prioritizing linear parks along Houston's many bayous, and are changing local narratives about green space. Echoing a plan for Houston written a century ago,¹⁷ the Bayou Greenways 2020 initiative will create a 150-mile network of greenways, the largest such network in the U.S. The project is funded by a parks bond ordinance for $100 million, supported by voters in 2012 by a two-to-one margin, which is being matched and extended by local philanthropists for a total project sum of $215 million. A new master plan for parks created in 2014 and 2015, partly in light of these shifts, provided the impetus for the surveys in the present study.

While Houston has been shown to have racial inequalities with regard to environmental “bads” like pollution,¹⁸ its parks have yet to be studied through this lens. The dramatic changes to the parks system in Houston prompt the need for such an investigation, and we particularly hone in on resident opinions to see how they wish to best improve their parks.

Methodology

Data

This research analyzes two surveys conducted in Houston. The first is the Houston Master Plan Parks Survey, conducted by the Houston Parks and Recreation Department (HPARD), which aimed to measure perceptions and preferences of Houston residents about parks. This survey was an attempt to get a citywide sample of park users and while advertised across many Houston parks, the survey had to be completed online. This online convenience survey yielded 1,864 respondents, 64 percent of whom are non-Hispanic whites, and 63 percent have household incomes over $75,000. This sample is not representative of Houston as a whole, where minority groups make up the majority of the population and the median household income is $45,620.¹⁹

The second survey, which is the primary focus of the results below, was created and fielded on behalf of HPARD to better understand the perceptions from under-surveyed neighborhoods and populations in the first survey. The Survey on Underrepresented Populations for Houston Parks (SUPHP) was designed and conducted by a team of researchers led by four undergraduate students at Rice University, under the supervision of HPARD as well as faculty, staff, and a graduate student at Rice University. Six additional trained undergraduate assistants conducted surveys. Out of 21 total park sectors in Houston, three sectors—sectors two, seven, and fifteen—were chosen for analysis because of their high black and/or Hispanic populations. In concert with suggestions from HPARD, researchers selected eighteen parks within these three sectors to survey. Interviewers visited the parks on weekdays and weekends at varying times of the day to conduct face-to-face surveys with park users. The survey was conducted in either English or Spanish based on the respondent's preference. A total of 403 surveys were completed. For this study, we analyze only surveys completed by blacks and Hispanics for a final sample of 357 individuals.

Measures

Because our study is primarily concerned with the preferences in minority communities, the statistical analysis in this study focuses on the SUPHP survey. One measure, though, is from the original HPARD survey. The first survey asked respondents to rate several parks system improvements on a one to four point scale, from lowest priority to highest priority—note, though, that it is not a ranking: respondents could choose multiple categories as the highest priority.

While the HPARD survey was more open-ended in order to determine what improvements or changes respondents wished to see for the Houston parks system, the SUPHP included a question where the respondent had to pick a single response from those often cited in the HPARD survey: 1) cleanup and repair existing facilities, 2) develop new facilities, or 3) create new biking and walking connections between neighborhoods and parks. A second dependent variable used in the descriptive analysis below was an open-ended question that asked respondents: “What changes or improvements do you think would make Houston parks better?” The responses were inductively coded into several thematic categories. This was done instead of the check-box methodology used in the HPARD survey to see what aspects would come to a park user's mind without prompting.

Ten independent variables are included in the analysis of the SUPHP survey. Two demographic characteristics are included: gender (female = 1), and race (measured as a dummy variable where blacks = 1, and Hispanics = 0). Six variables pertain to park use. The frequency of park use is measured dichotomously as greater than once a month (deemed frequent), or once a month or less often (deemed infrequent). The use of parks is measured in three emergent categories from an open-ended question about park activities: exercise, socializing, and use of the playground. Each was converted to a dummy variable. A binary variable measures whether the respondent has visited one of three large, popular regional parks in Houston. The mode of transportation to the park is indicated by those who took personal motor vehicles in one category, and all others—walkers, cyclists, and public transit riders—in a second category.

Additionally, we make use of a measure of park quality which uses a rating system whereby each researcher who conducted SUPHP surveys in a given park rated that park on a scale of one to three on four attributes: 1) number of facilities, 2) cleanliness of grounds, 3) cleanliness of amenities, and 4) an overall impression of the park. These scores were then averaged for each park, and transformed into a standardized score. We also included a control variable for the park sector in which the respondent was interviewed.

Analytical approach

We present descriptive statistics for select variables from the Houston Parks Master Plan Survey and discuss shortfalls in its data collection methods that led to the creation of the second survey described above. Using this as a backdrop, we show descriptive statistics for the SUPHP survey, followed an analysis using multinomial regression techniques. Multiple imputation was used for missing values.

Results

In the HPARD survey, in which respondents rated but did not rank park preferences, respondents rated biking and walking connections between neighborhoods and parks highly: two thirds of respondents ranked it as a high priority, earning a 3.45 out of four overall. The second highest rated priority involved revitalizing existing parks with a score of 3.37. Acquiring new land for parks, among other options, was rated less highly (score = 2.93). These results are presented with the caveat that respondents were not representative of Houston's population. Additionally, it is important to remember that the survey respondents were not representative of the citizenry of Houston as nearly two-thirds were white, more than three out of five made in excess of $75,000, and 73 percent of respondents lived in just seven of the twenty-one sectors most of which are located on the city's more affluent west side.

Table 1 shows descriptive statistics for key variables in the SUPHP study. The park preferences of respondents focused primarily on cleanup and repair of existing parks (46%). Thirty-one percent of respondents favored creating new biking and walking connections between neighborhoods and parks, and 22 percent chose to develop new parks facilities. More than three out of five respondents visited parks at least once a month, and at least one quarter had visited a large regional park. Uses of the park varied, with a majority saying they liked to use parks for exercise and to socialize, and 38 percent go to parks for the playgrounds. More women (56%) took the survey than men. The sample was nearly evenly split between blacks and Hispanics.

Table 1.

Coding, Mean, and Standard Deviation of Study Variables

Variable	Coding	Mean	SD
Parks preference—cleanup and repair existing parks	0 (not selected) to 1 (chosen preference)	0.46	0.5
Parks preference—create new biking and walking connections between neighborhoods and parks	0 (not selected) to 1 (chosen preference)	0.31	0.47
Parks preference—develop new parks facilities	0 (not selected) to 1 (chosen preference)	0.22	0.42
Race	0 (Hispanic or Latino) to 1 (black)	0.52	0.5
Gender	0 (men) to 1 (women)	0.56	0.5
Exercise user	0 (no) to 1 (yes)	0.62	0.49
Social user	0 (no) to 1 (yes)	0.61	0.49
Playground user	0 (no) to 1 (yes)	0.38	0.49
Park usage	0 (less than once a month) to 1 (once a month or more)	0.61	0.49
Regional park user	0 (no) to 1 (yes)	0.25	0.43
Park quality	Standardized score	0	1
Park sector—sector two	0 (no) to 1 (yes)	0.29	0.46
Park sector—sector seven	0 (no) to 1 (yes)	0.38	0.49
Park sector—sector fifteen	0 (no) to 1 (yes)	0.32	0.47

Before asking respondents the closed-ended question about parks improvement priorities, we asked the open-ended question about their ideas on how to improve Houston parks. Table 2 shows that respondents overwhelmingly favored bettering amenities and improving basic services. About 40 percent of respondents mentioned new or improved recreational or leisure facilities at the parks. A quarter of respondents were concerned with poor park maintenance, and another quarter noted a lack of health facilities, such as restrooms and water fountains. Safety was also a recurring category: 24 percent of respondents wanted features like a greater security presence or better nighttime lighting.

Table 2.

Responses to Open-Ended Question about Parks Improvements ^a

Improvement	% of respondents
Upgrade recreational or leisure facilities	39.8
Better bathrooms, water fountains, etc.	25.8
Make park safer	24.1
Enhance park maintenance	22.7
Increase park programs	7
Create more trails in parks	3.9
Better parking	2.5
Greater connectivity	0.6
Other concern	13.7

Respondents listed as many improvements as desired (mean number of improvements listed = 1.53).

While a lack of certain amenities was perceived as a major problem at these parks, perhaps the most striking finding is that, among the 357 respondents, only two mentioned the issue of access. Neighborhood connectivity to parks was not a salient issue among park users in these neighborhoods, although this had been a primary finding from the 2014 Master Plan Survey and a favored option of 31 percent of respondents in our closed-ended question. Instead, they envisioned a diverse set of new or improved amenities—most prominently, restrooms and water fountains, and an array of recreational infrastructure—in better maintained and safer parks.

Table 3 shows the results of a multinomial logistic regression predicting the respondent's closed-ended park preference with the modal category, cleanup and repair of existing parks, as the base outcome. Regression findings comparing the base category and respondents who chose creating new biking and walking connections show the importance of park quality. Being surveyed in higher quality parks is associated with choosing biking and walking connections compared with cleaning up and repairing existing parks, net of other variables. This suggests that respondents visiting low quality parks view issues of access as a secondary issue to improving park amenities, and, if park quality concerns are satisfied, greater connectivity is more salient.

Table 3.

Multinomial Logistic Regression Coefficients (standard errors) Predicting Parks Preference ^a

	Biking/walking connections vs. cleanup and repair parks	New parks facilities vs. cleanup and repair parks
Individual characteristics
Race (Hispanic, ref.)	−1.13^**	−0.51
	(0.36)	(0.36)
Gender (men, ref.)	−0.54+	−0.4
	(0.29)	(0.31)
Driver (non-drivers, ref.)	0.49	−0.39
	(0.37)	(0.35)
Park usage characteristics
Exercise (not exercise user, ref.)	0.08(0.35)	0.51(0.34)
Socialize (not social user, ref.)	−0.12(0.3)	−0.02(0.31)
Playground use (not playground user, ref.)	0.11	0.33
	(0.32)	(0.33)
Park usage (less than once a month, ref.)	0.48+	0.42
	(0.29)	(0.31)
Regional park use (not visited, ref.)	−0.58+	−0.39
	(0.34)	(0.36)
Park characteristics
Park quality	0.58^***	0.14
	(0.14)	(0.15)
Park sector (sector 7, ref.)
Park sector 2	−0.49	−0.46
	(0.38)	(0.43)
Park sector 15	0.5	0.8^*
	(0.37)	(0.38)

Source: Survey on Underrepresented Populations for Houston Parks.

+p < 0.10; ^*p < 0.05; ^**p < 0.01; ^***p < 0.001.

Models estimated on multiple imputation data set.

A second significant variable shows that black respondents have lower odds of desiring biking and walking connections between their neighborhoods and parks compared to Hispanic respondents. Some research finds that Hispanics tend to use active forms of transportation more frequently than blacks (in addition to whites). This research, however, has primarily studied children or national-level trends in bicycle commuting where overall rates are very low.²⁰ Thus, caution should be employed in interpreting this finding given the dearth of knowledge about day-to-day transportation choices of different racial and ethnic groups.

Table 3 also shows that there are few differences between those who chose to develop new facilities compared to those who chose to cleanup and repair existing facilities. All variables are not statistically significant, with one exception. Park sector fifteen respondents have greater odds of selecting new facilities compared to cleanup and repair relative to park sector seven respondents. This may be because a majority of our survey respondents in sector fifteen came from a single large park; the research team's efforts to canvass several other parks in the sector yielded low numbers of responses. With only one well-used park, sector fifteen residents may be indicating their support for new parks and facilities that offer more convenience.

Conclusion

As researchers and policymakers consider how to improve parks systems, we believe it is necessary to acknowledge voices from across the socioeconomic and racial spectrum, and to especially include voices from marginalized populations that are often missed. The SUPHP survey specifically investigated the preferences of these populations, and brought them into local policy discussions. The survey's findings were integrated into HPARD's planning process in meetings with park officials, presented during a large public meeting about revising the HPARD parks master plan, and has created new applied research projects on the park quality-park preferences link.

Taking into account a more inclusive program of parks planning, our research in Houston indicates that support for access-related initiatives is likely overestimated and misaligned with the preferences of black and Hispanic residents in marginalized neighborhoods, a finding echoed in a growing literature critical of such development.²¹ In fact, respondents in the second survey indicated that they chiefly desired cleaner and revitalized parks, and that respondents in worse-off parks especially preferred this option. Repairing existing parks operates as a first order concern. Only if these concerns regarding quality are met is greater connectedness a priority. This is in contrast to respondents of the first HPARD survey, whose predominantly high-income and white respondents were in support of park and neighborhood connectivity throughout Houston. Most strikingly, our open-ended question about improvements for parks yielded hundreds of concerns about amenities like recreation and leisure facilities, enhanced maintenance, and stronger safety measures, but only a few about greater access to parks.

The implications for diverse audiences such as parks department employees, citizen advocates for parks, and academics studying environmental justice issues are connected by the need to be inclusive of voices typically under-represented in planning processes, namely those of racial minorities and low-income populations. In Houston, particular effort must be made to better existing parks infrastructure in these communities. Further, the well-funded Bayou Greenways 2020 program should be attentive of the need to build strong parks along their linear corridors, as well as link to cleaner, safer parks in the wider parks system. Future research should examine if these findings hold in other cities and investigate if minority residents elsewhere exhibit a similar preference for fixing amenities before building connections. Finally, we must reaffirm that if our parks are ever going to serve local residents to the best of their ability, policies and plans regarding parks should be made in response to the voices of those residents.

Footnotes

Author Disclosure Statement

The author has no conflicts of interest or financial ties to disclose.