8 Comment

• kjb434 May 24, 2012 at 10:22 am

  Another crappy ranking that claims Houston has little park acreage. They don’t count Harris County parkland which makes up a large part of Houston park infrastructure. Much of the parkland along Bayous (particularly Brays) is county and now city which means these surveys don’t count them. Arthur Story Park and Terry Hersey Park are not counted either.

  Get real parkland number for Houston and then start ranking. You’ll find we fair quite well with other cities and beat many.
• Superdave May 24, 2012 at 10:39 am

  @kjb434 – This same datum (acres of city-owned parkland) goes into Men’s Health’s annual “fattest cities” rankings – as you mentioned, it’s completely flawed – most older and northern cities have parkland that was developed and/or acquired directly by their city government, not by other government entities. Recently, I had to explain to my father-in-law in Boston what a “county” government is and how it functions here. Alas, not all cities are alike…gasp, I know.

  Men’s Health also incorporates heat and humidity values in their rankings.
• Superdave May 24, 2012 at 10:43 am

  I forgot to mention, we have a lot of “parkland” and what I would call “park-like land” that is available to the public for recreation that is also owned/run by the US Army Corps of Engineers, Harris County Flood Control District, private environmental groups (Katy Prairie Conservancy, Audobon Society, Armand Bayou, etc.), as well as outlying suburban cities (like Katy and Sugar Land).
• Sara May 24, 2012 at 11:33 am

  I’ve lived in several other cities that rank higher on the park list. You know what? I never lived more than a short walk to a park. That’s what the list is about–neighborhood parks in compact cities. No need to get so upset-you know what Houston is about when you move here.
• kjb434 May 24, 2012 at 12:31 pm

  Absolutely right Superdave.

  There is NO shortage of parks in Houston and the surrounding area and one is always within walking reach.

  Houston also has a non profit group that raises private and pulls in federal grants to further develop the park system versus having to budge for park creation. There initiative is to intensify the park development along the natural corridors (bayous). They are pretty far along with Brays and have shifted focus to White Oak Bayou.

  To the un-informed, this is just another incomplete study that sheds bad light on Houston because we’re a city that dares to do things a little different.

  I guess that’s what we get for being non-conformist.
• Robert Boyd May 24, 2012 at 2:29 pm

  “There is NO shortage of parks in Houston and the surrounding area and one is always within walking reach.”

  You must be joking. I love Houston’s parks, but there are plenty of places in the area that don’t have parks all that close by.
• kjb434 May 24, 2012 at 2:34 pm

  Robert Boyd,

  Where?
• takeshi May 25, 2012 at 11:26 am

  @kjb434: Citation? You seem to be generalizing. ParkScore seems to have data on the parks you claim as excluded if you look at their Houston map. How are you determining that they are excluding Brays, Arthur Story, Terry Hershey, etc?

  From The Trust for Public Land’s (ParkScore’s source according to their site) 2011 City Park Facts:

  “When we say ‘park’ we are referring to publicly owned and operated parks. In Report #1, we count every kind of park within the municipal boundary of the city, including national, state, county, regional, and municipal parks. We do not count private golf, tennis, swimming, or other clubs, nor do we count parks in gated communities.”