What is Your City's Park Score

Around 100 million Americans don’t live within a 10-minute walk of a park. The best city to live in if you love parks is Washington DC. The capital ranks number one on the Trust For Public Land's ParkScore.

The Trust for Public Land's ParkScore ranks America's 100 largest cities based on their parks. A city's ParkScore is calculated based on four different factors. These include the total size of parks in the city, the money invested in parks, the amenities in the parks, and how easy they are to access. Washington DC ranks very highly in three out of the four areas (it only achieves a medium score for the total acreage of its parks).

If you select a city from the ParkScore website you can view a breakdown of how the city's parks rank under each of the four judged criteria. You can also view details on the percentage of the population who live within a ten minute walk of a city park, what kind of amenities can be found in the parks and how much city land is used for parks and recreation.

You can also view an interactive map which visualizes the level of accessibility to parks in US cities on the Trust for Public Land's ParkView application. This map colors areas of the city which have the worst access to city parks. The map also identifies areas of the city which are the optimal points for new parks based on an estimation of the most residents who would be brought within a 10-minute walk of a park. ParkView also provides details on the percentage of the city currently within ten minutes walk of a park and the number of people in the city who aren't within ten minutes of a park.