New England Parks 2013

New England Parks Association Helps Recreation Professionals Calculate Value of Community Parks

Sept. 11, 2013 — Landscape Structures and its Massachusetts playground consultant, M.E. O’Brien & Sons, Inc., supports Peter Harnik, director of the Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence, as the keynote speaker at the New England Parks Association (NEPA) Fall Conference Sept. 11-13, in West Dennis.

Harnik will discuss how to calculate the value that a parks system brings to cities and its residents. While many community members love parks because of the recreational opportunities that they provide, many people—including some mayors and city council members—rank the value of parks based on dollars in versus dollars out. That’s why the Trust for Public Land collaborated with prominent economists to devise a sophisticated system to measure the economic value that a park system brings to a city, including property value, health value, environmental value and more.