Buffalo ranks among the middle of the pack in a newly released survey of park systems in the nation's largest cities.
The Trust for Public Land ranked Buffalo well for park access and facilities, but the city fell short in its park size and investment.
The Trust, a group that creates parks and protects land,surveyedthe park systems in the nation’s 75 largest cities. Buffalo received 2.5 park benches out of five, tying with Baltimore, Miami and Riverside, California, for 40th place.
The Twin Cities of Minnesota, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, ranked the highest, each receiving five benches.
According to Peter Harnik, Director of the Center for City Park Excellence at The Trust, parks are becoming even more important as more people move to large cities.
“People are rediscovering cities,” Harnik told WBFO. “They want to move back downtown. The Millennials maybe grew up in the suburbs and realize that city living can be real fun. Some of the empty nesters want to move back down now that they’re rattling around big houses with big yards to mow. If they’re going to lose their yards, they want to have great parks.”
The survey, called ParkScore, evaluated the parks based equally on three factors: park access, size, and facilities and investment.
According to ParkScore, 85 percent of Buffalo residents live within a 10-minute walking distance to a park, which is higher than the 71 percent average. The survey ranked Buffalo especially high for its basketball facilities. The city has 5.8 hoops per 10,000 residents, among the highest across the 75 cities evaluated.
However, ParkScore discovered Buffalo has a median park size of 1.1 acres, which is small compared to the average 5 acres.
Harnik said Buffalo doesn’t spend as much money on parks as other large cities.
“The area where the city is probably hurting the most is in the amount of money it’s spending on its park system to either buy new land or just keep up the parks or fix up broken equipment in the parks,” Harnik said. “That’s kind of on the low side. Fifty-six dollars per resident, when some cities are above one hundred.”
