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GreenStep City Best Practices Environmental Management

Parks and Trails
no. 18

Support active lifestyles and property values by enhancing the city's green infrastructure.

  Best Practice Actions    [See action tools, guidance, city reports]

  1. Identify and remedy gaps within your city's system of parks, offroad trails and open spaces.
  2. Plan and budget for a network of parks, green spaces, water features and trails for areas where new development is planned.
  3. Achieve minimum levels of city greenspace.
  4. Adopt low-impact design standards in parks and trails that infiltrate or retain all 2 inch, 24-hour stormwater events on site.
  5. Create park management standards/practices that maximize at least one of the following:
    a.  Low maintenance turf management/native landscaping.
    b.  Organic or integrated pest management.
    c.  Sources of non-potable water, or surface/rain water, for irrigation.
  6. Certify at least one golf course in the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program.
  7. Document that the operation and maintenance, or construction / remodeling, of at least one park building used a green building framework.
  8. Develop a program to involve community members in hands-on land restoration and stewardship projects.
benefits  
  • The Economic Value of Open Space: Implications for Land Use Decisions (Twin-Cities-based Embrace Open Space: 2005) and other studies.
  • Background on the psychological and economic benefits of natural spaces.
  • Studies have demonstrated that access to parks and trails increases physical activity - the research findings suggest locating playing areas, parks and trails within a 1/4 mile of residential areas - and that direct contact with vegetation or nature leads to increased mental health and psychological development.
  • The Center for City Park Excellence of The Trust for Public Land researches best practices in park management, what makes city parks successful, and how parks provide economic, ecological, and social value to their users.
  
Optional for all cities
Category C cities that choose to implement this best practice must complete at least one action.

Category B cities that choose to implement this best practice must complete at least two actions.

Category A cities that choose to implement this best practice must complete at least three actions.
summary
Along with city trees, city parks and trails soften our daily life spent in buildings, satisfying an innate affinity for the natural world. These green and open spaces can be a defining feature of a city, providing civic gathering spaces, venues for exercise and cost-free recreation, and connections to open space beyond city limits. City parks and trails provide many important ecosystem services, including the purification of air, reduction in the urban heat island effect, stormwater management, wildlife habitat, and carbon sequestration. Parks and trails are also economic development tools, increasing property values in their vicinity. And finally, trails can serve important transportation functions, connecting recreational destinations, job centers, retail centers, schools, neighborhoods and points beyond the city.
greenstep advisor
Emmett Mullin, Strategic Planning Director, Minnesota DNR: 651/259-5556, Emmett.mullin@state.mn.us
connection to state Policy

State law enables cities to require private developers to dedicate up to 10% of a development parcel to parkland (or make an equivalent monetary contribution): MN Statute (2007) 462.358.