The ParkServe database

To be included in the ParkServe database, a park or ‘park-like’ place must meet the following criteria:

• Be located outdoors
• Be a named destination (e.g. not an unnamed median or drainageway)
• Encourage informal public use (e.g., the public is encouraged to walk through and stay awhile)
• Encourage at least one ‘park-like’ activity such as socializing, enjoying nature, or play/exercise

Schoolyards with formalized open-access policies via joint-use agreement or school district policy are included. Privately managed parks, such as those managed by homeowners associations, may also be included if they are open for public use. Examples of sites that don’t meet the above criteria include parks in gated communities, private golf courses, publicly managed stadiums or zoos, and private cemeteries.

Parks data for the 100 largest cities are updated annually as part of the ParkScore Index, and parks data for all other places are updated on a monthly basis following TPL verification of public submissions via the ParkReviewer tool. See the technical documentation for more information at tpl.org/park-data-downloads

A 10-minute walk, estimated as a half-mile, is the average distance able-bodied people are willing to walk to reach a nearby destination; tracking this metric provides a useful way to assess the availability of close-to-home parks in each city. We calculate a ten-minute walk service area for each park in the database by creating a half-mile ‘walkable’ service area from each of the park’s public access points. This service area is created using Esri’s StreetMap Premium network dataset, which allows us to account for physical barriers such as highways, train tracks, or rivers without bridges.

Using these 10-minute walk service areas, we generate overall access statistics for each park, place, and urban area included in the database (e.g. number of people within a 10-minute walk of a park). This statistic is further disaggregated for three demographic variables – race/ethnicity, age, and income.

All calculated population statistics are based on 2025 US Census Block Group estimates provided by Esri. See the technical documentation for more information at tpl.org/park-data-downloads

Visualize where parks and park need areas overlap with the following factors using ParkServe’s Explore pane:

• Public school locations: See locations of all public schools in the country to identify opportunities to expand 10-minute walk park access by opening schoolyards for community use after school hours and on weekends.
• Park amenities: See which parks contain trails and playgrounds, as well as each park’s percent tree canopy.
• Demographics: See the population characteristics of neighborhoods in relation to locations of parks, including the following: race/ethnicity, limited English speaking, education, population density, age, and income. Demographic characteristics are summarized for census block groups.
• Health: See which areas have the highest rates of poor mental health and low physical activity.
• Climate: See which areas in a given city or urban area have the hottest land surface temperatures as well as which neighborhoods have the highest air pollution burden.

Identify priority areas to address park access gaps using a customizable prioritization index calculated from a set of six equally weighted demographic and environmental metrics:

• Population density
• Density of low-income households—which are defined as households with income less than 75% of the urban area median household income
• Density of people of color—which are defined as those who identify as Black, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander, multiple races, or other people of color.
• Community health—a combined index based on the rate of poor mental health and physical inactivity (except for Puerto Rico, where data is not available and the index is calculated without this category).
• Urban heat islands—the relative difference in surface temperature to the city’s mean surface temperature
• Pollution burden—an index reflecting levels of air pollutants (specifically, non-cancer causing toxins) that can cause respiratory issues.

The six measures are calculated for each census block group along with the block group’s relative rank (measured as a quintile on a 1-5 scale, with 5 as ‘highest’) to a given place. A composite Park Priority Index is then calculated for each census block group as an average of the relative rank of the six variables. This Index is visually displayed on the web map further combined into three categories: ‘very high’, ‘high’, and ‘moderate’ priority groups. The Index does not take into account presence or absence of parks. See the technical documentation for more information at tpl.org/park-data-downloads

The Index can be customized in the ParkServe mapping application using the sliders on the Prioritize Pane to adjust the weight of each of the six variables.

Calculate the 10-minute walk statistics of proposed parks and/or trails using the ParkEvaluator™ tool. This online tool enables anybody to draw a proposed park or trail, define its access points, and see the number of people – including demographic splits by race/ethnicity, age, and income – who would live within a 10-minute walk of it. Additionally, it calculates the impact on a given place or urban area’s 10-minute walk statistics.

The web tool allows users to draw in boundaries of a park or trail and uses ParkServe’s underlying park, street network, and population databases to calculate the proposed impact on 10-minute walk statistics. The impact statistics are calculated specific to the geographic scale selected – e.g. city or urban area. More information can be found in the technical documentation.

To use the Evaluator tool:

1. Select the appropriate geographic scale – either city or urban area – for the place of interest
2. Click to the evaluate pane and zoom to the proposed park or trail’s location
3. Draw either a park boundary or trail line on the map; double click to complete
4. Notably, the proposed park or trail boundaries has to either cross or be near to a road for the tool to work; it uses the road network to create the park service area polygon.
5. Run the analysis. It can take several minutes for the analysis to complete; patience is appreciated.

When the analysis is completed, the 10-Minute Walk Statistics pane is updated with statistics about how the new features would impact the city’s overall 10-minute walk access statistics, broken down by age, race/ethnicity, and income. Click the blue Export Report button to get this information via a downloadable pdf report.

Anybody can suggest edits to the underlying parks database, including editing boundaries, attributes, and access points of existing parks as well as adding new ones, via the Park Reviewer tool available in the ‘Feedback and More Info’ tab in the upper right of a given city’s ParkServe web map. Notably, editing requires zooming to a scale of 1:40,000 or larger. Scale of the map is displayed on the map in the lower left corner.

Alternatively, you can email a shapefile or feature class to [email protected].

Edits are reviewed by TPL staff to confirm they meet the park inclusion criteria with updates published monthly to the web map. The data downloads are updated annually and upon request. Providing your contact info when making edits allows for any follow-up questions. Thank you for your help in updating the nation’s most comprehensive database of local parks!

National Center for Education Statistics 2023-2024 school year

Trails and playground data were retrieved from Open Street Map (OSM) in August of 2025 and clipped to ParkServe® park boundaries. Trail data were augmented with USGS transportation trails data from January 2026, and Open Street Map.

Tree Canopy data is analyzed by Trust for Public Land from the 2024 High Resolution Canopy Height Maps by WRI and Meta. The data was accessed in 2025 via the Earth Daily cloud platform and TPL set the minimum tree height to 3 meters. The dataset was created using machine learning models on high-resolution worldwide Maxar satellite imagery, primarily from 2018 – 2020.

For the evaluate pane, demographic values are categorized into quintiles relative to their urban area. Three of these demographic values are used in the Park Priority Index – population density, people of color (density), low-income households (density) – and are categorized relative to either the place or urban area.

• Population density (people per acre): Number of individuals divided by populated acreage of the block group. Data source: Esri 2025
• People of color (% or density): Individuals that identify as Black, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander, multiple races, or other communities of color. Calculated as percentage for evaluate pane and density (people per acre) for Park Priority Index. Data source: Esri 2025
• Low-income households (% or density): Households with less than 75% of the urban area median household income. Calculated as percentage for evaluate pane and density (people per acre) for Park Priority Index. Data source: Esri 2025
• Limited English speaking (%): Percent of people in a block group living in limited English speaking households. A household in which all members age 14 years and over speak a non-English language and also speak English less than “very well” (have difficulty with English) is limited English speaking. Data source: ACS 5-year Data, 2023
• Adults with less than high school education (%): Percent of people age 25 or older in a block group whose education is short of a high school diploma. Data source: ACS 5-year Data, 2023
• Children under 19 (%): Percent of individuals under age 19. Data source: Esri 2025
• Over age 64 (%) Percent of individuals over age 64. Data source: Esri 2025

Both measures, poor mental health and physical inactivity, are sourced from the 2025 CDC PLACES dataset. For the evaluate pane, they are displayed at the census tract scale, with quintiles calculated relative to the urban area. Both are used in the Park Priority Index, where their quintiles are calculated relative to either the place or urban area scale at the block group scale (all block groups are assigned the value of their encompassing census tract). CDC PLACES data are not available for Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico’s Park Priority Index is calculated without the health category).

• Poor mental health: Respondents aged ≥18 years who report 14 or more days during the past 30 days during which their mental health was not good.
• Physical Inactivity:Respondents aged ≥18 who answered “no” to the following question: “During the past month, other than your regular job, did you participate in any physical activities or exercises such as running, calisthenics, golf, gardening, or walking for exercise”

• Urban Heat Islands: Trust for Public Land’s 2025 Urban Heat Island dataset shows where Landsat 8 satellite imagery thermal reflectance values are hotter than the average of the whole boundary. This reflects land surface temperature (e.g. building rooftops, paved surfaces, tree canopy) as opposed to air temperature. Additionally, it is calculated relative to both the place and urban area boundaries for both the evaluate pane and Park Priority Index
• Pollution burden: This factor considers levels of air pollutants that can cause respiratory issues. The 2024 EPA EJScreen respiratory hazard index metric, which is based on the 2019 Air Toxics Data Update. The index can range from 0 – 5 and is a relative measure of the amount of non-cancer-causing toxins that affect various organs in the ambient outdoor air. It has since been deprecated. It is included in the Park Priority Index.
• Heat-risk priority zones: areas where urban heat islands coincide with high density of people outside a 10-minute walk of a park. For each city, the park priority area block groups that are in the top two quintiles for heat AND the top two quintiles for population density were extracted, then merged into contiguous areas. The top five of these areas with the highest population are labeled on the map, indicating where many people live without park access and are exposed to relatively high land surface temperatures.

Park acreage equity analysis: This data layer is only available for the 100 most populous cities. It reflects the data used to calculate the ParkScore equity metric, which compares the distribution of parks and park space between neighborhoods by race and income. See tpl.org/parkscore/about for more info.

• Race/Ethnicity: This layer highlights the census block groups in the highest quintile of percent people of color or percent white population, relative to the city.
• Income: This layer highlights the block groups in the highest quintile of percent low-income households or percent high-income households, relative to each city.
• Park acres per person: For each census block group, its average park acreage within a half-mile of each of its census block points divided by that block’s population.