Dimensions of urban recreation in 113 selected United States cities: an exploratory analysis

Abstract

Planners, in response to the growing demands for urban recreation and the unfulfilled needs inferred from the existence of certain urban problems, are generally able to find only rule-of-thumb guidelines, unproven standards and intuitive approaches for planning recreation services. If the potential benefit so f future urban recreation development are to be realized, planners and researchers will need a better information base than has been previously available. This information base must include data relating to the general nature of cities, in recreation terms, and how any given city compares with other urban places so that general standards and models that are meaningful to real, specific problems and situations can be developed. This dissertation contributes to the building of such an information base through its investigation of the possibility of developing identifiable and meaningful city types. The study concentrates on the 113 cities in the United States which had 1960 populations in excess of 100,000 and for which adequate recreation data were available. These cities were examined on the basis of three univariate characteristics: (1) relative age, (2) population and (3) regional location; and also through principal components analysis. Particularly strong differences were revealed between young and old cities for nearly every recreation variable examined. Some of these differences can be related to historical changes in the park philosophies in cities over the last 180 years. There were also some striking patterns between the regions of the United States. The Southwest stands out in terms of open space in the cities examined while the Northeast shows some of the greatest apparent unfulfilled needs. This finding may have implications in terms of where future governmental funding efforts, and thus jobs, are likely to be channeled..