May 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 52

TOURISM

Take
the
District of Columbia.
About 18 million
tourists
visit
the
nation's capital every
year, joining almost 500,000
daily commuters who pile
into the city from the suburbs
Monday through Friday. At 3
a.m. on a nontouristy weekend -
say, a Saturday in early January -
there are about 600,000 people in
D.C., very few of them using a park.
At noon on a bustling weekday -
say, the Monday of Cherry Blossom
Festival week, with both the deluge
of commuters and flocks of tourists
- there are about 1.2 million, most
of them up and about, and many of
them in parks. Many of the folks are
playing, biking, sitting, eating lunch
or walking to one of the museums

on the National Mall (which
is, after all, a park and
the site of all those
cherry blossoms).
On an average
day, more than
one of every
two people on
the streets of
Washington is
a nonresident.
The Washington case
is particularly extreme, but
other cities also exhibit wild
swings in population. Orlando,
Anaheim, Las Vegas, New York
and Boston are deluged by
tourists, and Pittsburgh, Atlanta
and Miami are particularly
impacted by commuters. Even
the resident population of
Indianapolis - a midrange
city - experiences a 20
percent jump from tourists
and daytime commuters.
Obviously, visitors put
a different kind of
strain on city park
resources than do fulltime residents. Tourists
may make little use of pools,
recreation centers and dog parks,
but they are a big factor in such
downtown spaces as New York's
High Line and Chicago's Millennium
Park as well as signature destinations
like San Diego's Balboa Park and
Philadelphia's Independence Mall.
As for commuters, they are a major

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The Park Values Calculator tools in PRORAGIS™ allow agencies to estimate
the values that parks bring to their communities, capturing the potential
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allow agencies to provide powerful arguments to elected officials about the value
of parks. NRPA is actively engaged in supporting research to refine and expand the
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midday presence in Boston's Post
Office Square and Washington's
Farragut Square.
In some cases, the influx is the
unnoticed factor that explains a
city's high parks budget. On a perresident basis, Washington's park
and recreation spending came to a
chart-topping $294 in 2012, but on a
" per daytime urbanite " calculation, it
dropped to a more realistic $144. San
Francisco, another seemingly highspending city, dropped from $208 per
resident to $152 per daytime urbanite.
Even these budgets are generous;
in contrast, El Paso, Texas, which
actually has a larger population than
Washington but receives few tourists
or commuters, spent $39 per resident
and $38 per " daytimer. "

Obviously, visitors put a
different kind of strain
on city park resources
than do full-time
residents.

The impact of the nonresidents,
of course, is most heavily felt in
maintenance and upkeep. The National
Mall takes a beating as if Washington
were a city 10 times its size. New York's
Central Park receives more out-of-town
visitors every year - 11.5 million -
than almost every other park in the
country gets from its own residents. The
impact on grass, trees, paths, railings,
steps, shrubs, flowers, soil compaction,
roadways, water systems, fountains and
trash removal is immense.
Of course, no one should
begrudge the use of parkland by outof-towners. Yes, there may be more
May 2014 - Parks & Recreation

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