Regional Recreation planning: the next big idea. (NRPA Perspectives).

Today, there is little or no interagency coordination, cooperation, or even communication that occurs among local, state, and federal public recreation agencies. Each agency does its own thing, sometimes oblivious of a neighboring agency's programs, sometimes competing to do the same things.

Given that there is usually too little public funding to adequately build, staff and maintain public park and recreation facilities sites and services, isn't it time for agencies to cooperate in order to serve the public efficiently and fully, while better assuring that stewardship responsibilities are successful? In doing so, greater constituency development will naturally occur, as well.

In 1928, the Report of the National Conference on Outdoor Recreation recommended "the initiation, through inter-bureau cooperation, of regional studies and planning to determine the policy to govern forms of use, occupancy and management that will most completely realize the potential education, scientific, inspirational and recreational values of the national parks and forests."

The Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission Report to Congress in 1962 called for integrated recreation planning at the regional scale, without regard to ownership or jurisdiction: "All agencies administering outdoor recreation resources -- public and private -- are urged to adopt a system of classifying recreation lands designed to make the best possible use of available resources in the light of the need of people ... Implementation of this system would be a major step forward in a coordinated national effort ... It would provide a consistent and effective method of planning for all land-managing agencies and would promote a logical adjustment of the entire range of recreation activities to the entire range of available areas."

Charles Jordan, Parks and Recreation Director for the City of Portland, Ore., and a member of the National Park System Advisory Board, wrote in the Board's important 2000 report, "Rethinking the National Parks for the 21st Century," that "the Service should serve as a catalyst to encourage collaboration among public and private park and recreation systems at all levels -- to build a national network of parks and open spaces across America."

Now, whether the National Park Service by itself can or should be the catalyst for this collaboration is not the most important question. (I would argue that NRPA is uniquely positioned to lead this effort.) The most important thing to note about this big idea, is both that it is not a new idea, and that it seems that its time has finally come.

As Dr. Glenn Haas noted in his article on this subject in the February issue of Parks & Recreation on "ORRRC at 40," "We have made little progress in 40 years, and arguably, are more fragmented today than in the 1960s."

I have been looking hard for even one good example of a place in America where local, state, and federal public agencies, non-profit organizations and private recreation companies are all planning and working together without regard to each agency's boundaries, and I can't find one. If any NRPA member who reads this has a good example, please send it along to me at [e-mail].

The basic concept of regional recreation planning is simple. In order to establish a seamless network of parks and recreation spaces uniformly accessible to all people all across America, all of the providers of parks and recreation use opportunities, public agencies, non-profit partners, and for-profit providers, should, together, develop a regional recreation plan.

Planning together, without regard to agency ownerships and jurisdictions, within the visitation range of the public, local, state and federal, public and private recreation providers should:

1) Assess and survey the region regarding recreation needs and expectations;

2) Analyze gaps in the types or supply of recreation opportunity and together decide how to fill the gaps;

3) Assess the overlaps in similar recreation opportunities offered among agencies, and cooperate or combine for efficiency and economies of scale; and

4) Work together to inform the region that there is a recreation place for every activity (or there is intended to be in the future), but that every type of activity is not appropriate in every location.

One of the keys to the future of recreation will be to anticipate, understand and respond to changing public needs. It is inevitable that "high tech" (surfing the net) will be balanced by "high touch" (sports, wildlife observation, hiking) in the people's use of leisure time. Park and recreation agencies will need to be ready to respond. Needs assessments, gap analyses, visitor surveys and public education initiatives will all necessarily play a part.

Two key findings from surveys of the past remain constant: the public wants close-to-home recreation, and they don't care who manages it -- they just want to know that the resource or facility is available to them. The public also desires to know, and deserves to know, why a particular recreational use cannot be allowed in a particular location (resource protection or user conflicts), but that there is a place for it nearby.

Two other major factors need to be provided for by park and recreation agencies that haven't always been taken into account: the ever higher concentration of population in urban areas, and the heightened need for accessible facilities sites and programs to serve an aging population increasingly beset by disabilities.

Finally, I think it is a certainty that neither the great national parks nor the special places in urban areas (like the three Olmstead parks in Louisville that I recently visited) can be managed and protected as they were intended to be by law, unless there is an adequate and accessible opportunity for the full range of other recreational uses near those sensitive sites for where other, more intense, recreation uses are offered and expected.

Neither a great national park system, nor a great state park system, nor a great urban park system can be sustained in America unless and until each is fully cooperating with the other, and together they are engaging with the public, offering the full range of recreation opportunities to all of the people.