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There is good news news when it comes to the accessibility of Baltimore City parks.  The Trust for Public Land reports that eighty-five percent of Baltimore residents live within a ten minute walk of a park.  That shows that parkland is distributed throughout the city and most people can take advantage of the benefits that come with access to green space.  This also demonstrates that Baltimore City has the fundamental land structure needed to build a park system for all residents – not just those that live in more affluent neighborhoods.  In fact, low income and African American residents in Baltimore have similar access to parks as higher income and white residents.  This is not the case for the Baltimore metropolitan area as a whole.   Unlike the city, low income and African American residents in the metro area  have access to less acres of parkland than white and higher income residents.

Not only is access to parkland in Baltimore City evenly distributed and available to most citizens regardless of income or race, but the City has plans to further improve access to green space in the coming years.  In 2018, Baltimore launched its Green Network Plan.

That plan proposed to replace vacant lots and abandoned buildings with green space that is well managed and maintained throughout certain pockets of the City where blight is prevalent.  The advantages of this plan are two fold.  First, it prioritizes removal of vacant structures that plague so many different areas of the City in an effort to improve neighborhoods.  Second, the plan takes the opportunity to transform this blight into usable green space that benefits surrounding communities by creating parks, special uses spaces and better access to recreational opportunities. This further improves access to green space and expands the amount of citizens that have access to recreational opportunities.

Baltimore already has decent access to parks for all of its citizens.  The Green Network Plan should only make this even better.

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