Measuring access to and availability of outdoor recreational opportunities: One pixel at a time
Outdoor recreation is an important component of maintaining human health and wellbeing. Methods used to assess outdoor recreational areas tend to fall into one of two categories: those that measure access (i.e., are people within or beyond a given proximity) and those that measure availability (i.e., how much outdoor recreational space is present relative to the population). An integrated measure of accessibility and availability to evaluate public outdoor recreation areas is important for decision-making. We have designed a new metric that accounts for both people’s ability to reach public outdoor recreational areas on foot as well as how many people share those resources to better understand the extent to which populations are served. When applied to the conterminous United States, our model identified both unserved and underserved populations. In the most heavily developed regions (areas with greater than or equal to 85% average imperviousness), 93% of residents have access to public outdoor recreation areas but 50% of that population have less than three square meters available to them. These estimated 4.4 million Americans may not have sufficient availability of public outdoor recreation areas but are easily overlooked because they live within walking distance of at least one such area.