GENERAL MUNICIPAL AND COUNTY PARK PLANNING 101 



regional plans more comprehensive than the county park systems; large 

 areas are being acquired in the region about Pittsburgh through a county 

 park plan, and St. Louis, Baltimore and Los Angeles all have regional 

 plans either in process of formation or actually formulated. 



While notable progress has been made by school boards in most of 

 these cities in providing children's playground areas, especially in Los 

 Angeles with approximately 1,300 acres in 290 school sites and in San 

 Francisco with 1,346 acres in 100 sites, on the whole, school playground 

 area is very inadequate. In Detroit, through cooperation between the 

 municipal Recreation Department and the Board of Education, large sites 

 combining school site, children's playground, neighborhood playfield and 

 neighborhood park are being secured. Inasmuch as provision for children's 

 play is a subject of general public policy, and at the same time of tremendous 

 importance in the education of children, it should be adopted as a fixed 

 policy in planning that wherever necessary the municipal government and 

 the board of education work always cooperatively in providing these areas. 



Group X. Cities Having a Population of 1,000,000 or More. 



In 1920 there were three cities within this group comprising 10,145,532 

 inhabitants or 9.6 of the total population of the entire country. In 1910 

 this percentage was 9.2. 



The three cities in this group were reported to have (1925-26) a total of 

 22,467.35 acres in park properties of various types. These were distributed 

 among the cities as follows: New York City, 10,178.49 acres; Chicago, 

 4,487.21 acres; and Philadelphia, 7,801.65 acres. See pages 100 and 103. 



As compared with the park acreage in any one of the groups of cities 

 from 25,000 inhabitants upwards this group of three largest cities has, in 

 proportion to population, the smallest park acreage. Every one of them 

 began park planning shortly after the middle of the last century, but plan- 

 ning did not keep pace with the growth of the population within the limits 

 of the municipal boundaries. New York and Chicago are both richly 

 endowed in outlying reservations, the former through state parks and 

 county park systems and the latter through a great system of county forest 

 preserves. Philadelphia while having the lowest ratio of park property to 

 population of the three cities has no such outlying reservations. 



COUNTY PARK PLANNING 



The county courthouse site in addition to serving in its primary capacity 

 as the site for a building has functioned from the beginning of county govern- 

 ment in this country as a kind of "intown" park in county seat towns. 

 County fairgrounds have likewise functioned as a type of large park. Up to 

 the close of the last century these two types of properties represent the 



