San Francisco's parks rank 6th best in the U.S.
A national nonprofit has ranked San Francisco's park system as the 6th best in the U.S.
San Francisco received high marks for access and investment.
Washington D.C.'s park system came in first place in the ranking.
SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco's park system has been ranked as one of the best in the country.
What we know
The city ranked sixth on a national index moving up one spot from last year.
According to a study by the Trust For Public Land, investments and access to parks are major factors contributing to San Francisco's high ranking.
Other Bay Area cities in the 'Top 50' were Fremont at number 38, San Jose at 41 and Oakland at 44.
Dig deeper
The ParkScore Index compares park systems across the country's 100 most populated cities in the U.S. San Francisco received 80.2 points out of 100 based on five categories including; acreage, acreage, access, investment, amenities and equity. The city scored perfect scores in the categories of access and investment.
Access looks at the percentage of a city's residents that live within a walkable half-mile of a park. Investment looks at the relative financial health of a city's park system, which is essential to ensuring the park system is maintained at a high level, according to the index.
Washington D.C.'s park system came in first place, with Irvine, California and Minneapolis, Minnesota rounding out the top three in the rankings.
For a more detailed look at some of the data on San Francisco's parks, check out the ParkServe map.
For more on the ParkScore methodology, click here.
Trust For Public Land is a nonprofit focused on creating park space and ensuring everyone has access to a park space within a 10-minute walk from their home.

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5 days ago
- CBS News
How green spaces can help get kids outside and keep them cool
For Saul Maldonado, planting with his 7-year-old son, Nicholas, isn't just a hobby — the family is putting down roots in their Los Angeles community while transforming the playground at Nicholas' school. "Kids stay indoors," Maldonado told CBS News. "They want to be on the tablet. They want to be on the phone because there's nowhere safe for them to be outside and play." Outdoor play isn't always easy to come by. An estimated 28 million kids in the U.S. don't have easy access to parks or green spaces, according to the nonprofit Trust for Public Land. "If you look around our community outside these walls, what we really have is a concrete jungle," said Adriana Abich, who runs Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, where Nicholas is a student. Until recently, the school's playground was mostly asphalt, which had drawbacks beyond its look. Blacktops absorb and trap heat, and can reach up to 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Abich said it was a drain on the students. She said the difference between students coming back from the playground and their peers was noticeable. "Being tired, being extremely overheated," Abich said. The school partnered with Trust for Public Land to rebuild and maintain a new outdoor space. Nola Eaglin Talmage, a program director at the Trust for Public Land's Los Angeles Parks for People, showed CBS News how the new grass and greenery help cool the playground by a whopping 40 degrees. "Providing children shade to play is a critical health need," she said. "Beyond the heat, trees and plants mitigate pollution. The more canopy trees we can provide, the more those trees are actually cleaning the air for the children." The nonprofit is on a mission to provide even more access to nature. "For kids, it helps them with their development, ability to regulate emotions, with their ability to imagine and conceive," Talmage said. Genesis, 9, remembers the old blacktop. She said she didn't like playing on it, but enjoys the new green space. "It's more natural, it's more fun, 'cause there's grass, you can play," she said. Maldonado said that years from now, "I want my community to be clean. I want the community to be safe. I want to see families with, with their kids at the park, playing and riding a bike."


Atlantic
12-07-2025
- Atlantic
Let Your Kid Climb That Tree
A bunny, small enough to nestle in a cereal bowl, has recently started hanging out in my backyard. Now and again, it nibbles a plant or lies in the sun. Mostly, it explores the limits of movement, zooming, darting, feinting, and trundling through bushes. Once, I saw it corner so hard that it sprayed mulch in a giant, messy arc. A human kid who did that would almost certainly be called inside to clean up. But I haven't seen the adults in this bunny's life in weeks; the baby has carte blanche. If only more of the kids I know could be so lucky. Wild animals are the best movers on the planet, and little ones spend much of their time frolicking, fighting, leaping, and climbing. From birth, human children share animals' potential for wild movement; left to their own devices, they would presumably tumble about like puppies. But more and more, they do nothing of the sort. This is due in part to the human trend toward self-domestication, and also to the structure of modern society. 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In the United States, many parents habitually tamp down on horseplay out of fear of injury to their children (or their furniture)—or because social norms dictate that they get their squiggly kids unsquiggled and into waiting rooms, subways, stores, airplanes, and restaurants, where children are expected to 'behave.' That impulse, however, risks reinforcing the notion that sedentariness is preferable at a time in a kid's life when they really do need to move. Turn over almost any rock in the stream of health research, and you'll find warnings about the dire consequences of idleness, as well as abundant reasons for children to explore free movement. Children who move have healthier bones, muscles, and joints, and lower their future risk of obesity and chronic disease. Research has found that active kids develop superior cognitive skills, get better grades, and are more likely to stay on task than kids who are less active. In a systematic review of studies, researchers found that active children are more likely to report feelings of well-being. And a study published in The Lancet that examined the prevalence of adolescent depression among English youth suggested that increased sedentary behavior in adolescence could affect a person's mental health into adulthood. Childhood might be a particularly costly time to not move, because this is when developing brains prune unused potential. 'One extreme view' of this neurological dwindling 'would be that you start out wired up for every possible contingency,' the Harvard neuroscientist Jeff Lichtman said in an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences —but as you age, unused connections in the brain get permanently disconnected through a process known as synaptic pruning, leaving you with 'a narrower nervous system.' 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P3's researchers focus on 'kinematic movers,' whose bodies have a ready solution to almost any movement problem: They can land on either one foot or two, jump every which way, and change directions easily. They're not always the highest jumpers or the fastest sprinters, but, at least among a well-studied cohort, they are likely to play for a long time without injury. This is why Elliott recommends that children play like animals: He suspects that every adult kinematic mover grew up playing freely like that fuzzball in my backyard. The robustness necessary to repel injury has little to do with getting in cardio, running fast, or jumping high. Instead, he says, robustness has to do with 'movement quality,' which is to athleticism as fluency is to language. This tracks with an observation made by the journalist David Epstein, who writes in Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World that athletes from tiny towns have irrational levels of success. Epstein's theory is that with a shortage of players, small towns need the best athletes on the football, baseball, and basketball teams. Playing a variety of sports might foster a person's robust movement vocabularies. Thankfully, providing kids with more freedom doesn't require a lot of money. Mostly, it just requires a little creativity. Almost every kid who comes into my house feels a deep urge to romp on the huge yoga ball in our living room (which cost less than $20). They body slam it, Superman across its top, throw a sibling into it, and do other bonkers stuff. Many parents who witness such behavior grow anxious, shout bossy directives, or declare the ball off-limits entirely. Of course, I understand; no one wants to end up at urgent care. But I'm also aware that kids who start out falling down go on to quickly develop new skills. Some blossom into pro-grade yoga-ball surfers. 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20-06-2025
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‘Prepare to be blown away': New national monument near Santa Cruz to open with trails for hiking, biking
Almost a decade ago, former President Barack Obama recognized a 'spectacular' stretch of coastal mountains and prairie near the Santa Cruz County community of Davenport with the prestigious designation of national monument. The public, however, was never allowed in. That will change this summer. After years of unexpected delays preparing the site for visitors, the Bureau of Land Management has scheduled the opening of the 5,800-acre Cotoni-Coast Dairies monument for the afternoon of Aug. 15, a Friday. About a 15-minute drive north of the city of Santa Cruz on Highway 1, the onetime ranch and adjacent lands will debut with its northern reaches opened for hiking, biking and sightseeing. This includes nine of 27 miles of planned multi-use trails. The public will be able to access the full range of landscapes that the site is celebrated for, from broad marine terraces overlooking the Pacific Ocean to steep slopes spanning oak-dotted ridges, stream-lined canyons and redwood forest. Salmon and steelhead swim in the creeks, and jackrabbits, foxes and mountain lions roam the hills. 'When I get out there, I just feel like the place gives me a big hug,' said Zachary Ormsby, Central Coast field manager for the Bureau of Land Management. 'Visitors are going to feel that, too.' The site's name pays homage to both the native Ohlone people, specifically a subgroup called the Cotoni, and its early 1900s history as a Swiss dairy farm. The opening of the national monument to the public marks the end of a decades-long fight to keep the lands free of development. Sitting in the shadow of Davenport's shuttered cement plant, the site was spared from being absorbed by the factory. It also escaped unrelated proposals for oil drilling and a nuclear power plant. Protection came in the late 1990s after plans emerged for the area's bluffs to be lined with luxury estates. The San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land and Save the Redwoods League, among others, raised money to coordinate a roughly $45 million acquisition before any homes were built. About 500 of the original 7,000 acres that were purchased for conservation were conveyed to California State Parks while another portion was retained for agriculture. But the bulk of the property remained idle until a long-term caretaker could be secured. In 2014, 5,843 acres were transferred to the Bureau of Land Management. Shortly after that, the environmental community launched a campaign to upgrade the federal site to a national monument, a status that brings greater safeguards for natural and historical features as well as a higher public profile for the area. 'We see the property as having these superlative conservation and recreation values,' said Sara Barth, executive director of the Sempervirens Fund, the Los Altos-based land trust that helped lead the effort to make the lands a monument. 'It's larger than some of the other protected areas in the region. It's also more ecologically distinct. It has a rich history to it, too.' In January 2017, as one of Obama's final acts in office, the former president designated the federal site part of the California Coastal National Monument. Cotoni-Coast Dairies became the biggest onshore property within the existing monument, which includes a handful of distinguished spots along the Pacific. The Bureau of Land Management had hoped to open Cotoni-Coast Dairies years ago, but concerns about potential crowds caused delay. Neighboring communities worried there was too little parking and too few toilets, while scientists and conservation groups wanted to make sure that sensitive habitat, areas for wildlife and historical points would be preserved. Federal officials worked to address the issues. They've partnered with outside organizations to begin restoring watersheds for endangered coho salmon. Indigenous groups have surveyed culturally important plants on the property. Plans to rebuild an old 'cheese barn' are in the works. Perhaps most visible, the Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship and its many volunteers have taken the lead on constructing the monument's growing trail network, having recently completed three interconnecting 3-mile loops. The trails will be accessible from a new parking lot just north of Davenport near the junction of Warrenella and Cement Plant roads. Beyond serving hikers and bicyclists, parts of the multi-use trail system are designed for people using adaptive bikes accommodating mobility issues. The Bureau of Land Management hopes to open a second lot south of Davenport, with more trails, in the next few years. More details on the Aug. 15 opening will be provided closer to the date on the Bureau of Land Management's website for the monument. 'We've all been driving by this place for years and years and years,' said Matt De Young, executive director of the Trail Stewardship. 'Prepare to be blown away.'