Extent

The ParkServe database maintains an inventory of parks for every urban area in the U.S., including Puerto Rico. This includes all incorporated and Census-designated places that lie within any of the country’s 3,000+ census-designated urban areas. This totals to over 15,000 cities, towns, or villages included in the database, which represents about 75% of the U.S. population.

Parks Database

Trust for Public land compiled the ParkServe database from 2016 to 2018. TPL contacted each city or town to request parks data, as well as searched for GIS parks data resources on municipal and regional open data websites. If no GIS data were available, we delineated park boundaries based on satellite imagery, and confirmed public access via city park websites or signage viewable through Google Street View. Cities and towns were given the opportunity to confirm our delineated boundaries.

Today, there are about 145,000 parks in the ParkServe database. Parks data for the 100 largest cities are updated annually as part of the ParkScore Index, and parks data for all other places are updated on a monthly basis following TPL verification of public submissions via the ParkReviewer tool.

How do we define a park?

In order to accurately represent park access across large communities, open public access is the key criteria for inclusion in our database. We include a wide variety of parks, trails, and open space, so long as there is no barrier to entry.

Examples of parks we include:

Publicly-owned local, state, and national parks, trails, and open space

School with a joint-use agreement with the local government.

Privately-owned parks that are managed for full public use

Examples of parks we don’t include:

Parks in gated communities

Private golf courses

Private cemeteries

School parks/playgrounds without active joint-use agreements

Zoos, museums, professional sports stadiums

For field descriptions, see https://www.tpl.org/park-data-downloads