Park Equity: Measure access to parks and trails

[alanjosephwilliams]

(This initial issue thread captures a conversation that occurred on another repo)

Idea

A primary motivator for park governments to publish data in PLATS is to increase access to that information, and in turn, increasing access to the parks and trail system itself. It could be helpful to actually measure access to parks and trails at the outset of that transformation, giving parks a better understanding of which communities need more assistance or communications efforts.

Description

• Use buffers to describe the walkshed around segments in the trail network.
• Pair with the Census API to describe the population that lives within those walksheds.
• Compare with regional demogrpahics
• Extend analysis with transit data

Prior Art

The Trust for Public Land, which serves as an advisor to the PLATS Request for Comment process, worked with GreenInfo, a non-profit also heavily involved, to produce ParkScore.