Parks: Tools for Planning and Economic Development by Tracy Mullins, MS, AICP
simple calculations of increased tax receipts accruing from properties in proximity to parks. This calculation revealed that people frequently paid a higher price for a home proximate to a park than comparable properties located elsewhere, away from the park. The higher value of these properties meant that their owners paid higher property taxes. The increment of taxes attributable to the parks could then be used to retire bonds issued to acquire, develop or renovate the park. If a community accessed government grants to pay for part of their parks system development, it would benefit faster from incremental increases in taxes. The evidence of the positive impact of parks on adjacent land values became conventional wisdom and was used to fuel the early park movement in the USA. As urban parks were developed in the United States from the 1850s through the 1930s, many elected officials authorized investment of public resources in the belief that such investments paid for themselves. The economic justification was that a local park of suitable size, location and character, and which received consistent adequate public maintenance, added more to the value of the remaining land than the value of the land withdrawn to create it. This straightforward methodology ignored an array of other factors in addition to parks that could have influenced property values but reflected the simple statistical tools and research designs available at that point in time. (Crompton, 2005)
cal impacts of different types of land-use to examine the cost of community services. Such research weights anticipated economic benefits from various forms of development against the cost of delivering infrastructure and services such as roads and schools to the development. (Crompton, 2011). Research explains that the proximate effect is significant, up to 500-600 feet (typically three blocks). In the case of community-sized parks over 30 acres, the effect may be measurable out to 1500 feet, but 75% of the premium value generally occurs within the 500600 foot zone. Research studies suggest that a positive impact of 20% on property values abutting or fronting a passive park area is a reasonable point of departure for estimating the magnitude of the impact of parks on property values. A series of studies conducted in New York City reported similar positive impacts emerged when substantial capital investment was made in renovating existing parks which had deteriorated (Ernst & Young, 2003).
With regard to the proximate principle, not all parks are created equally. The type of park is a significant factor in the value that it adds to adjacent properties. Passive parks generate the greatest premium while properties adjacent to an active park may actually decline in value. The value of a park can be compromised by problems regarding noise, nighttime lighting, congestion and parking. Unattractive or poorly maintained parks, a lack of visibility from nearby streets (which According to John Crompton, between the 1930s and Jane Jacobs called “eyes on the street�), and properties 1970s in America, the proximate principle virtually backing onto linear parks whose privacy was comprodisappeared from mainstream discussions of parks in mised are only marginally valuable in this principle. the context of urban planning and economic development, in part because of cynicism stemming from the Can an investment in parks produce a higher return lack of sophistication of the studies that professed to than using all the available land for development? verify the principle. The resurrection of the proximate Generating value in the built environment that is principle since the 1970s has been coincident with the greater than its cost is a cornerstone of leveraging use of Geographic Information Systems and sophisti- public space to create real estate value. This is also cated economic models which make complex analyses among the best ways to ensure the attractiveness of feasible and enabled quantitative identification of the real estate as an investment. Like all other goods, the economic contributions of parks/open space to prop- premium that people are prepared to pay to be proxierty values separately from the contributions of other mate to a park is influenced by the available supply. If attributes. (Compton, 2005). Urban planners working parks (or open spaces) are relatively abundant, then with economic developers can now evaluate fis the premiums would be likely to be relatively small or
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