PRECM 09-01-1982 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

• durcxi by thc~sc' l~~rks('fablr I, column 4). Thus, un an an- nual basis thescr four E~ark~;-219 acres of urban open 5pacc~--generate some $349,195 of external ~~conumic benefits. r~ L I • ti noted lxfore, however, the external economic Abenefits represent only a portion of the total eco- numic value of a park, Tu get a full picture we must aLSo consider the value of the on-site recreation produced by the parks. Of course, no one really knows the econo- mic value of an individual visit to a park. Therefore, because we wanted tube very conservative, we began by assuming that each individual visit was worth an average of $1; that is, in return for the privilege of using one of these parks, people would be willing to pay an average of $1 per visit. Of course, this is an assumption in the truest sense; there are no data to validate it. On the other hand, $1 seems conservative when one considers the current market price of many private sector recrea- tion activities. Annual attendance figures for three of the parks were readily available from the Worcester Parks and Recrea- tion Department (Table 1, column 5). These figures were not usable directly, however, because many of the park users lived within 2,000 feet of one of the parks. Presumably these people have already paid a premium in their housing costs; to charge them again would be a sort of double counting which would overestimate the value of the park. To counter this, we conducted a series of interviews in each park to determine what percentage of users lived beyond the 2,000 foot range (Table 1, col- umn 6). Then, to the adjusted attendance figures (Table 1, culwlul 7), we applied the $1 value to dc.~termine the an- nual recreation benefit (Table 1, column 8). Then the total economic benefits produced annually by the parks (sum of columns 4 and 8) can be compared to the annual operating cast Crable 1, column 9)to obtain the overall relationship of benefits to casts (Table 1, column 10). Overall, these 219 acres of urban parkland generate annually $424,597 of economic value for the city of Wor- ct~ster. Obviously this is substantially in excess of the $125,000 that it costs the city each year to operate them; the ratio of benefits to costs is +3.40. As we suspected, however, all the areas did equally well. In fact, under our current assumption that the value of a visit is worth $1, the cuts of the Elm-Beaverbrouk complex exceed the value of the benefits it supplies. This would change, of course, if one assi~ed a different dollar value to an individual visit. On the other end of the scale, the benefits of Greenwood Park exceeded the casts by nearly $140,000 annually. Obviously, the net benefits (total benefits minus costs) produced by individual parks vary substantially. Realistically, the quantity of benefits produced by any in- dividual park will reflect both the characteristics of the park (size, degree of development fur active recreation, aesthetic caliber, and so forth) and the characteristics of the surrounding neighborhood (residential density, eco- nomic level, age composition, and so forth). Unfor- tunately, the number of parks in our study was too small to permit us to identify exactly how each characteristic affected benefits. It does appear, however, that there is a tendency for the property value benefit to be maximized by parks which emphasize natural open space as op- lx>bctif to intenx development for organiu~d recreation. This is consistant with the finding of a 1973 study by Welcher and Zxrbst in Ohio. In fact, it may well be that on-site recreation benefits and external property value benefits are not compatible; as the level of use rises, the property value benefit declines (Table 1). Finding ways to optimize both will be a major challenge for future park designers and landscape architects. In the meantime, researchers must keep trying to identify those elements of parks that will maximize the different benefits and provide more documentation of fhe dollar value of on- site recreation experiences. Despite these uncertainties, this research clearly shows that the value of benefits generated by urban parks greatly exceeds their operating cost. Obviously these parks are a vital part of everyday city life. Our profes- sional challenge in an era of growing fiscal austerity will be to provide more hard documentation of their value. EDITOR'S NOTE: For more information vn the research studies cited within this article, contact Dr. Thomas Stevens, Dept. of Food and Resource Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003. Please circle reader service card number 14 PARKS & RECREATIONJAUGUST 1982 33 For catalog call toll-free 8p0/547-1940