Quadrants
RICHREIDPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
PARK MAPS BREAK LEGISLATIVE LOG JAM
California state legislators had money for parks but couldn’t choices. TPL already had a park-deficit computer model to map
spend it. In 2006, as part of state ballot Proposition 84, existing park acres per resident. Now the team added more than
voters authorized $400 million for new and revitalized parks. 35 map layers showing such variables as population density, pro-
The initiative required enabling legislation to determine jected growth, economics, age, mobility, and health. And it con-
where the money would go. One common way of allocating structed an interface to show how changing these variables
funds is by population density, which would favor the largest would affect where the money would go.
cities. But legislators from other parts of the state protested In the end, legislators settled on two criteria. To qualify
that their communities needed parks, too. to apply for the funds, communities needed to have less than
So legislators, working with a coalition of conservation, three acres of parkland per thousand residents or a median
social justice, and park advocates, including TPL, proposed household income of less than 80 percent of the household
an allocation system based on need. The proposed criteria average. TPL was able to supply maps by zip code to show
focused not on population but on poverty and access to parks. which communities would qualify. They showed that portions
Still, some legislators were concerned that these criteria would of every legislative district would qualify for funds.
leave areas of the state without funding. Passed in September 2008, the Parks Development and
What legislators and park advocates needed was an easy Community Revitalization Act authorized the state parks
and graphic way to grasp where the money would go under department to set up the grants program. “It was amazing how
various scenarios. So TPL’s director of government relations the discussion shifted once we had the maps,” says Dinno. “If
in California, Rachel Dinno, put in a request to TPL’s national a picture is worth a thousand words, these maps were worth a
geographic information system (GIS) team. Could they create thousand parks.”
interactive maps that showed, based on various criteria, where For more information on TPL’s GIS services, go to
were the highest needs for parks across the state? www.tpl.org/services.
This task was similar to work the GIS team does every day
to help communities nationwide visualize conservation and park
