The Walking Access of Appleton Public Parks

GEOG 337 - GIS II

The goal of this project was to utilize the skills gained and tools learned throughout the semester in GIS II to conduct a unique research project. My project focuses on public park accessibility and walkability. Public green space yields a multitude of societal benefits. Living near quality parks has been proven to lead to an increase in exercise and health, bringing together neighboring communities, an encouragement of civic engagement, increasing economic opportunity, lower crime rates, and is important for peoples’ positive mental health. For these reasons, providing access to parks for everyone should be a crucial part of city planning. In regards to park equity, park-poor neighborhoods and communities are frequently on the front lines of exposure to negative environmental impacts such as urban heat island effects, flooding, and lower air quality. These communities are often low-income and have high non-white populations. My goal of this research project is to see if this trend is apparent in the moderately sized city, Appleton, Wisconsin. This case study attempts to answer the following question: do the residents of Appleton, Wisconsin have adequate walking access to public parks- specifically, the residents living in low income areas?

This study was conducted because GIS in park planning is fairly new. Originally, half mile buffers were used to determine which areas were serviced by parks. Buffers are very inaccurate because they do not allot for actual paths, water bodies, highways, elevation, and many other factors. Using a transportation network to determine walkability creates a better park service area. Another reason this study was conducted is that the results of case studies measuring park accessibility and inequity are very wide ranging. Some studies find access inequalities while some don’t; it varies from city to city. Additionally, there were no case studies found for cities with populations under 100,000. This project helped determine if these inequity trends are apparent in a smaller city.

The service area breaks are at both a five minute or .25 mile distance and a ten minute or .5 mile distance. These were chosen because the NRPA defines the service area of a neighborhood park as a 0.25-0.5 mile radius around it. After the service area of each park was determined, the low-income block groups were identified to determine if they have adequate accessibility.

There were differences between the ESRI park data and the Appleton park map, so additional parks were digitized and unnecessary polygons were removed. All data was clipped to the City of Appleton boundary. I removed all highways because they are dangerous or impossible to walk on.

I found the center of each park using the feature to point tool and made them the facilities for the service area. I created the two breaks in the service area to comply with the national standard of park accessibility. Additionally, the City of Appleton parks and recreation website has a list of recreation amenities for each park. I counted the number for each park and created gradual symbols based on amount. This way, the spatial distribution of park amenities can also be analyzed.

Overall, Appleton needs improvement regarding park accessibility. Many service areas are cut short because of the existence of a highway. The north part of Appleton especially lacks public parks. Although this area is mostly higher-income, everyone deserves access to parks.

There is a cluster of high-amenity parks downtown, while the north and south-east areas of Appleton have very low park amenities, if any. There are some parks that have many recreational amenities but low walking accessibility. This is problematic, as they only cater to people with access to vehicle transport. Notably, the most accessible park has few amenities.