Best Practice

GreenStep City Best Practices: Environmental Management
Parks and Trails {BP No. 18}

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

Best Practice Actions

1. Make improvements 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 green space and maximize the percent within a ten-minute walk of community members.
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/city land management standards/practices that maximize at least one of the following:

a. Low maintenance turf management; native landscaping; organic or integrated pest management; pollinator/monarch-safe policies.
b. Recycling/compostables collection; use of compost as a soil amendment.
c. Sources of nonpotable 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 an asset management tool, the SB 2030 energy standard, or a green building framework.
8. Develop a program to involve community members in hands-on land restoration, invasive species management and stewardship projects.

Optional Best Practice for Step 3 Recognition

Category A cities: implement this best practice by completing any three actions.

Category B cities: implement this best practice by completing any two actions.

Category C cities: implement this best practice by completing any one action.

Step 4 Recognition Metric for Category A, B and C cities

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. For example, a $14 million bonus of 2008 tax revenue from ten GreenStep cities in Hennepin County was attributable to homes located within a half-mile of green space.

And finally, trails can serve important transportation functions, connecting recreational destinations, job centers, retail centers, schools, neighborhoods and points beyond the city.

Greenstep Advisor

Headshot of Anna Callahan: long, straight light brown hair, glasses, smile, wearing a blue jacket standing in a forested area with a lake and island in the background

Anna Callahan, Senior Program Manager, Community Powered Parks and Schoolyards - Trust for Public Land: 651-447-8545, anna.callahan@tpl.org, www.tpl.org/our-work/minnesota

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.

Benefits

Major Benefit

  • A 2006 economic study conducted by Embrace Open Space quantifies the open space premium for homes adjacent to or near open space (parks and natural areas) in Hennepin County. To understand how/why to work with developers on open space, see The Case for Open Space: Why the Real Estate Industry Should Invest in Parks and Open Spaces (ULI: 2018), which presents four case studies from around the country.
  • 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.
  • After the publication of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder in 2005, author Richard Louv and others co-founded the Children & Nature Network to disseminate results from peer-reviewed scientific literature and innovative ideas, evidence-based resources and tools, all in service of creating a future in which all children play, learn and grow with, and benefit from, nature in their everyday lives.
  • 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. See also the related City Parks Alliance for case studies of excellent parks and for benefits of urban parks in the economic, public health, environmental, community, and educational dimensions.