How Close are we to having a Park with a 3 minute walk of all Chelsea residents?

In the post on the 3 Minute Park we showed why Chelsea needs a park with a 3 minute walk of all Chelsea residents. Here we show how near we are to meeting that goal.

      This map is all the NYC Parks Dept Parks(Green symbols) and a radius of 3 minutes around them. Large portions of eastern Chelsea are more then 3 minutes from a Parks dept park.

         

Most people use parks for passive recreation. a place to sit outdoors.Most  people do not care if that place to sit outdoors is in a DCP park or another public space.

The map below shows a 3 minute radius around Privately owned public spaces   and other private outdoor  spaces  that offer public seating(yellow symbols). Private owned public  spaces are mostly missing from south east Chelsea.

The next map is 3 minutes around  DOT Plazas, Playstreets, and the currently under construction  plazas of Hudson Yards and Manhattan West(bench symbol) . Ther are not many plaza spaces in Chelsea.

This is a map of 3 minutes around  Chelsea's Sidewalk Parks (aka Citybenches) these are the white dots on the map

In a study for Age Friendly NY one of the findings was that They (seniors)  care about benches, trees, gardens and open space closest to where they live. Big parks are for occasional visits in most cases.”  - Creating an Age Friendly NY One Neighborhood at a Time 

 As the study says seniors what seniors really care about is a place  to sit outdoors  closest to where they live. The map above shows Chelsea's Age-Friendly sidewalk parks cover a greater area of Chelsea then any of the other  entities offering public outdoor seating in Chelsea.

Each  sidewalk parks can be  installed in hours  at a fraction of the cost  of centralized parks facilities
 Sidewalk park benches are the fastest, most cost effective way to install more outdoor seating for Chelsea residents.


This final map shows a Unified Parks Systems map consisting of all the Public outdoors Passive recreation seating locations in Chelsea. It shows that by looking at all outdoor public seating phat Chelsea offers a Place to sit outdoors within  a 3 minute walk of all Chelsea residents with the exception of the small shaded area in south east Chelsea.

 Click here for a printable copy of the Park Chelsea Map



Does this  mean we don't need any more centralized parks? Absolutely not. What it does show us is that:

-The fastest, most cost effective way to add more passive outdoor seating  to Chelsea is to do so by the installation of more sidewalk parks in areas with no or spotty passive recreation seating coverage.

-That passive recreation parks  should not be a priority in the creation of new centralized public spaces  . What Chelsea is in a far more  need of is  outdoor parks with adult activities and active recreation, creative kids recreation  and also indoor parks. .