B. Pricine Pouicy ror Pusitic Recreation LANDS 
(By W. Robert Patterson, MIT) 
I. INTRODUCTION 
The guarantee of open spaces and recreational areas is not an iso- 
lated policy on which politicians and government agencies can act 
independently but is just one of many policies to be evaluated, having 
as their common denominator the resource land. Open spaces and 
recreational areas are lands to which people can go for the enjoyment 
of their beauty, or recreational areas where people can appreciate the 
pleasures of outdoor activities and living. Recreational areas can also 
be the black-topped basketball courts stuffed into the heart of the 
ghetto, for this area serves a similar purpose to its users. The urban 
recreational area is more a function of city planning and land resource 
reutilization within the urban-industrial core and, as such, will not be 
treated in this paper. 
Open space land development involves the trading of costs and 
benefits between agricultural and nonagricultural land uses. Non- 
agricultural land uses include urban developments, public facility 
developments, industrial usage, wildlife reserves, parklands, and 
Federal, State, and local recreational areas. Some of these are for direct 
consumptive use such as homesite establishment, while others use 
land as the necessary resource in the process before the end product 
reaches the ultimate consumer. By measuring the benefit-cost ratios 
for all those competing uses, the land manager can determine which 
use best meets the demands for the future. Land for parks and recrea- 
tional areas must compete for existing available land on this basis. 
The demand for parks and recreational areas depends upon many 
factors. The most important ones are the size of the population, the 
level of income, the amount of leisure time, and the type of transporta- 
tion available to the users. Social, cultural, and physical factors like 
the level of education, the amount of physical activity on the job, and 
the level of community participation in recreation, influence the 
demand to a lesser degree. 
Over the years, these factors have been changing so that the demand 
for recreational areas and parkland has increased. This trend does not 
seem to be leveling off, but rather all indicators point to greater rates 
of growth in the demand for the future. The problem is one of providing 
the new facilities and maintaining the existing ones to meet this de- 
mand. The supply of land for recreation and open spaces is a fixed 
quantity. Also, it is a characteristic of much recreational and open 
space land that many uses render them economically unsalvageable. 
The recreational use of these available lands must compete with all 
other possible uses. In the long run, the people must indicate how 
they would like these lands to be used, by their preference in the 
market place or indirectly through the political process. Their de- 
mands for recreational lands are shown in their willingness to sacrifice 
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