Partner and funded by: City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation

The Park Department obtained federal Community Development Block Grant funds to conduct user studies of these three large urban parks. PSRG submitted separate proposals for Brooklyn and the Bronx and won both contracts. The work was intended as a complement to efforts at all three parks to increase user involvement and support through community outreach. It was PSRG’s task to count annual usership, study the needs and preferences of park users, and to prepare ethnographies of the parks. In field work over the course of one year, PSRG conducted between 320 and 360 interviews with visitors in each park as well as participant observation in selected locations. A subcontractor was hired to conduct the census of visitors. Final reports on each park included statistical analysis and interpretation of the interview data, the park ethnographies, census reports, and policy and programming recommendations to park administrators based on the user needs PSRG had identified. Work was completed in June 1998.

Photo by Josh Gallaway