Traveling to Boston: What Makes Boston a Great Place for Families with Children

My youngest son and I spent a week exploring Boston this summer.  We fell in love with Boston's open spaces, pedestrian orientation, and cultural amenities. This post is about some of our favorite places in Boston and why we found Boston to be such a great place for families with children. Next up, a post about why Boston is still losing families with children to the suburbs.

Our favorite family-friendly amenities in Boston:

1. Boston's extensive network of high quality parks. Boston has parks for everyone, big and small, with 97% of the population living within a ten-minute walk of a public park (compared to 43% in Austin), and 3.5 playgrounds per 10,000 residents (vs 1.3 in Austin). We visited a different park everyday. One of our favorite parks, or rather series of parks, was the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a mile-and-a-half ribbon of new parks that were built on top of a major highway after it was relocated underground. The parks were filled with family-friendly amenities, from water features to carousels and wide lawns.

Map of Boston's public parks
from the Trust for Public Land
ParkScore index website

The Canal Fountain in the North End Park of Boston
Part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway

The Armenian Heritage Park in Boston
Part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway

An alley in Boston's North End

2. Pedestrian-orientation. Boston is one of the most pedestrian-friendly U.S. cities we have visited as family, with its wide sidewalks, well-striped crosswalks, and walking access to a diverse array of urban amenities. Indeed, Boston ranks third on the Walk Score index of walkable cities. Whenever we arrived at a mid-street crosswalk, the cars would actually stop to allow us to cross! (This is a novelty in Austin, where you place your life at risk if you cross a mid-street crosswalk.). While my son would have protested, I could have easily spent the whole week just walking around the city.

3. Public squares and alleys. I was equally impressed with Boston's rich array of lively public open spaces beyond its parks, including the city's numerous public squares, pedestrian-friendly alleys, and historic walking trails. The city government is embarking on a new 2015-2021 Open Space Plan, which will identify opportunities for further enhancing the city's public space inventory.

Public square in Boston's North End

Park and public gathering space in Central Boston

Jaume Plensa's "The Alchemist"
MIT Campus

4. Cultural Amenities:

Boston is teeming with cultural amenities with its public art and historic architecture, outdoor concerts, and museums galore, all within walking distance or an easy ride on public transit. In a week, we could not come even close to visiting all of the museums on our wish list.  My son's favorites: Boston Children's Museum and Museum of Science (where, to my chagrin, one of the most popular interactive exhibits was a machine that you could make fart). My favorites: Old State House, Boston Freedom Trail, and the MIT Museum (in Cambridge across the river). We never made it to the Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Fire Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Isabella Gardner Museum, the USS Constitution Museum, and many of the other museums in Boston.

Boston Children's Museum

Indoor climbing sculpture
Boston Children's Museum

Boston Science Museum
The toot machine

Playground Innovations

"[Playgrounds] are among the few remaining places within the city for non-purposive, spontaneous, and creative activity, for exciting physical challenge and discovery."

--Gabriela Burkhalter, curator of the Playground Project at Carnegie Museum of Art

The Thinkery

I have playgrounds on my mind this month. The Thinkery--Austin's new children's museum--opened this month, and one of its best features is the new playground in the courtyard of the museum. Fun, unique, and engaging for kids.

And in Pittsburg, the Carnegie Museum of Art is showing the Playground Project exhibit, which chronicles some of the world's most outstanding playgrounds from the mid-to-late 20th century. The New York Times ran a write up of the exhibit earlier this year. As the write up for the exhibit explains, the playground is "a place where opinions about education, exploration, aesthetics, and the public space abound. . . Yet most playgrounds today are highly standardized and sanitized. A change is needed, but, as history shows, it is only possible if we engage in the revitalization not only of the playground but of the public space in general."

I have been collecting images of whimsical and inspiring playgrounds from around the world on my Pinterest page and agree with the Playground Project curators' conclusions that these types of playgrounds are few and far between. But I also believes that projects like the Thinkery playscape indicate a promising trend towards more innovative play structures. 

Here's to more projects in Austin's future that promote creative play, physical challenges, and discovery for kids of all ages.  Happy New Year.

Austin's New Budget for Parks

Little Zilker Park

The Austin City Council adopted its 2013-14 budget today. Good news on the parks front! The adopted budget includes $3.6 million in additional funding for parks, trees, trails, and swimming pools, thanks in large part to the grassroots advocacy of Great Austin Parks and supporters such as Councilmembers Tovo and Morrison. In the Trust for Public Land's most recent park survey, Austin ranks #54 in per capita spending for parks and recreation, with funding at $68 per resident, compared to the national median of $82. Even with the increase in parks funding adopted today, Austin will still likely rank in the bottom half of cities when it comes to per capita spending on parks and recreation. But with the vote today, we can hopefully nudge up a couple notches on the list (and since the new budget includes an allocation for 49 more police officers, maybe the existing parks will at least feel safer??).

Unfortunately, the budget adopted today does not do much to address another huge need in the city: creating new parks in underserved low-income neighborhoods. More than half of Austin residents are unable to access a park on foot (or wheelchair or stroller), including thousands of children in low-income areas of the city. Hopefully we can take greater strides to address that equity gap in next year's budget.

Tomorrow I will be posting on what some other cities, most notably San Francisco, are doing to creatively carve out new public open spaces.

Butler Park

Zilker Park

How Austin Ranks on Public Pools Access

School's out for summer! And that means lots of swimming for my kids to escape the scorcher heat. One of the things my family has always loved about Austin is all the wonderful swimming options. In my next blog post I plan to list some of our favorite swimming spots in and around Austin. This post is dedicated to how Austin performs when it comes to providing public swimming pools, a key asset in family-friendly cities.

In a 2011 survey of U.S. cities by Trust for Public Land, Austin ranked #11 nationally in terms of public pools per capita, with 4.5 public swimming pools per 100,000 residents (based on pools deeper than 4 feet). This is great news and no surprise given our plethora of public pools. The oldest public pool in Texas (Deep Eddy) is even here in Austin.

However, since the Trust for Public Land survey was conducted, Austin has fallen farther behind on the list and is at risk of plummeting even further down the list if current trends continue. Our population is booming (now at 843,000 residents), but the Parks Department has recently been closing public pools rather than adding them, due to budget cuts adopted by City Council.  It seems that every budget cycle our pools continue to be on the chopping block, or hours are cut back more. When you tally up the public pools listed on the City's website, we are down to 31 pools. These cuts put Austin now at 3.6 public pools per 100,000 residents, or #20. Are more cuts on the way?

In case you are curious, the top ten cities from the Trust for Public Land survey are:

• Cleveland
• Cincinnati
• Birmingham
• Pittsburgh
• Tulsa
• Washington, D.C.
• Atlanta
• Philadelphia
• Denver
• Tucson

Now let's take a closer look at Austin's public pools and when they are actually open to families for recreational swimming. When you look at the City's posted dates and hours for our public pools, it is quite disconcerting to see what little time our pools are actually open to kids for recreational swimming, especially given our many months of summer-like weather and the physical benefits to kids of swimming. Almost all of our pools are open for only 8-10 weeks during the summer, and many are not open in the mornings. Even more disconcerting is the geographic divide (and racial/socioeconomic divide) in public pool access. I hope that I am missing something in my data analysis that follows and that there really isn't such a stark divide between East and West Austin in terms of public pool access.

Let's take a sunny, hot day in July. It's 10am and you want to take your family swimming at a nearby Austin public pool. Your options for a morning swim, depending on where you live?

• East Austin*: 1 pool (only Martin--the other pools are only open in the afternoons)
• South Austin: 5 pools (Barton Springs, Big Stacy, Dick Nichols, Dittmar, Garrison)
• West Austin: 5 pools (Deep Eddy, Ramsey, Reed, Shipe, and West Enfield)
• North Austin: 5 pools (Balcones, Canyon Vista, Murchison, Northwest, Walnut Creek)

Now let's take a day in early May or September (when the average high temperature is in the 90s, and the record high was 112°F). It's 4pm, sweltering hot, and you want to take your kids swimming after school or on the weekend at a nearby Austin public pool. Your options?

• East Austin: 0 pools
• South Austin: 2 pools 
• West Austin: 1 pool
• North Austin: 1 pool

Breaking these geographic areas down even further, Northeast Austin (with high rates of poverty and childhood obesity) has no public pools no matter what time of the year. 

*I am using the Parks Department's geographic categorization of pools here:

East Austin: East of IH-35

South Austin: South of Lady Bird Lake and West of IH-35

West Austin: North of Lady Bird Lake, South of 2222, and West of IH-35

North Austin: North of 2222 and West of IH-35

Chicago: Providing Children with Access to Quality Parks

Last week, Chicago Mayor Emanuel announced a comprehensive strategy to ensure that every child in Chicago lives within a 10-minute walk of a new park or playground. WOW!  Here's a news story on the program, called "Chicago Plays," which will build new parks and refurbish 300 city playground over the next five years. By the end of this year alone, the city will open 5 new parks, rebuild 50 playgrounds, and acquire 200 acres of parkland.

Last year, I blogged about the issue of childrens' access to parks in Austin. Our track record here is dismal: Austin ranks 65th in the country in per capita city spending on parks operations and maintenance, and only 37% of Austin's inner-city residents live within a 10-minute walk of a public park (less than 42% of residents outside the urban core). Meanwhile, in cities such as Chicago, more than 90% of residents can walk to a park (91% in NYC, 97% in Boston, 99% in Minneapolis).

A recent City of Austin Urban Parks Workgroup report recommended that the City step up its commitment to expanding park access, by dedicating $20 million in the City's most recent bond election for new park acquisition. Instead, only a fifth of that was put on the ballot last year for voters to approve, which will barely make a dent in closing our city's park access gaps. We have a long way to go. The Chicago model is inspiring.

Amazing Playgrounds -- Integrating Play and Art

We were visiting New Braunfels, Texas, this past weekend and came across this cool playground at the children's museum there.

New Braunfels, Texas, children's museum

On my Pinterest board, I have been collecting photos of other cool playgrounds from around the world that I have come across in some form or fashion this past year (either in person, via pics from friends, or via Internet). It's refreshing to see so many playground designs innovating beyond the ubiquitous swing set, slide, and monkey bar grouping (which are quite limited in how they engage children, especially the 8 and older set). Some of the newer designs are truly magical. Among the best playgrounds are those integrating play and art to captivate children's imaginations, encourage their sense of wonderment, and draw them into play.  Please keep sending me pics of any amazing playgrounds you come across in your travels.

Here are some of my favorites:

Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam designed playground
at Hakone Open Air Musuem in Takone, Japan
© Sikuen, Flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution/Noncommercial/Share Alike License

More photos of this amazing playground are available on the designer's website.

Monstrum playground in Denmark
Image from Monstrum website

Merry go 'round in Paris
From our trip there this Summer

Monstrum playground in Copenhagen Denmark.
Image from Monstrum website

Monstrum playground in Gothenberg Denmark.
Image from Monstrum website

Takino-Suzuran Hillside National Park in Sapporo, Japan
© MJ/TR Flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution License

Great Parks: Examples from Paris

Market studies have established that when families with children are deciding where to live, one of their top priorities is access to quality parks. But when it comes to providing this access, Austin has a long ways to go: Only 47% of the city's population lives within walking distance to a park, and the city is even struggling with maintaining its existing parks. In a recent survey, Austin families cited the lack of child-friendly open space as one of their top concerns about the City and its ability to support the needs of families and children.

Over the next decade, to attract and retain families with children in the city, Austin needs to tackle two challenges with its parks system: access and quality. The City needs to figure out how to join the ranks of cities like Chicago, Seattle, Denver, and Minneapolis in ensuring that the bulk of its population has walking access to a park, and, at the same time, the City needs ensure that its parks are high quality and attractive to children and persons of all ages.

One of the greatest park systems my family has ever come across in our travels is in Paris. The Project for Public Places even ranked 4 of Paris's parks amongst the top 24 in the world. This past summer my family, including our 2-year-old nephew, had the opportunity to visit several of Paris's marvelous and magical parks. Indeed, it seemed that every 1/2 mile or so in our travels throughout the City we would come across a fabulous, engaging, one-of-a-kind park. Here are some pictures from our trip:

Jardin des Tuileries, Paris

Jardin des Tuileries, Paris

Parc de la Villette

Parc de la Villette

Parc de la Villette

Jardin d'Acclimation

Jardin d'Acclimation

Jardin d'Acclimation

Jardin d'Acclimation

Place des Vosges

Parc de la Villette

The Biggest and Best Opportunity for Spectacular Public Space in Downtown Austin

Austin has an incredible opportunity to create a series of spectacular public spaces downtown, along a 1.5 mile span of Waller Creek. These spaces have the potential to become amongst the best public spaces in the country.  The 28-acre area along the creek includes two public parks and many other open spaces.

The Waller Creek Conservancy is in the midst of a design competition for transforming this section of Austin into a vibrant, livable area that also creates a healthy ecosystem for the creek. The 4 finalists from the design competition were recently announced, and the winning design will be selected next week.  The designs issued by the finalists include lots of very cool and inspiring concepts--for people of all ages to be excited about exploring.  Excerpts are available at the Conservancy's website. These are the kinds of ideas that make me wish I were an architect, except that I can't draw....

Turenscape + Lake | Flato Architects

Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. and Thomas Partners

CMG and Public Architecture

CMG and Public Architecture

Designing Healthy Communities on Public Television

Found out today from my friend Rachel that public television is broadcasting a wonderful 4-part series on Designing Healthy Communities. In Austin, you can catch the series on the KLRU-Q station on Sundays at 2pm. Here is a description from the show's website:

Designing Healthy Communities is a multimedia project that highlights people and communities trying to balance health and nature with work, play, and life, and offers best practice solutions for all citizens. Stories and methodologies explored in Designing Healthy Communities point the way toward a healthy and sustainable future. The host of our series is Dr. Richard Jackson, pediatrician, former CDC head of environmental science, top public health official in California, and current UCLA Department Chair and Professor of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health. We met Dr. Jackson at one of the more than 150 lectures and papers he delivers annually. Dr. Jackson's message is compelling: over the past half century, the built environment has contributed to the alarming fact that almost two thirds of our population is overweight, suffering from diabetes, heart, asthma, depression and other chronic diseases. If we look upstream at the causes--obeisance to the automobile, lack of public transportation, parks, sidewalks, bike paths, multi-use housing, and community sense of well-being--we discover that the built environment threatens our future generations. Dr. Jackson believes that improving the design of our communities holds the potential for addressing many of the nation's current childhood and adult health concerns. 

Also want to share these wonderful photos that my friend Kim sent me from her visit to Discovery Green park in the heart of downtown Houston. The 12-acre park offers enticing features for children and people of all ages (even in the 100 degree heat) and is cultivating new life in an area that used to consist of a swath of surface parking lots.

Summer Night Out in Austin with Children

The summer break is coming to an end, although it doesn't feel like it. This weekend we enjoyed a night out at one of the most beloved child-friendly spots in Austin: Butler Park.  A magical place in the evening.

Children's Access to Great Outdoor Spaces vs Austin Funding

I am still in Telluride with my family, where we have been completely immersed in the outdoors.  It has been a delight to see the joy our kids experience as they play in the woods, discover wild raspberries and worms (see below), and explore all around them.  Being here has made me feel poetic about the outdoors and summer, so I wanted to share this wonderful poem, The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver (click on title; it's ever better if you listen to Garrison Keillor read it). 




Not much can compete with what parks and open spaces offer children in terms of cognitive, social, and motor development, in addition to all-around physical and emotional well-being.

On the City of Austin front, our City Council is in the midst of deciding what to put on a November bond ballot for a host of items, including parks and public open space. The Council is also about to adopt the City's budget for the next fiscal year.  Unfortunately, for both these items there is a dismal amount proposed to increase access to parks and public open space. Currently, 63% of Austin's inner-city residents do not have walking distant access to a public park. This is in contrast to cities like Minneapolis (99%), Boston (97%), Denver (90%), Seattle (79%), and Chicago (90%). Austin also ranks 65th in the country in per capita spending on parks operations and maintenance. Other related stats can be found in the City's Urban Parks Workgroup report.  More on this topic in future blogs, but now is the time to speak out to Austin City Council members about the bonds ballot and city budget to ensure that all Austin children have access to great outdoor spaces.

Finding raspberries in the woods

The joy of finding a worm!

PARIS PLAYSPACES FOR CHILDREN: SLIDE SHOW

The Which Way blogger is back in Austin recovering from jet lag, the Texas heat, and the reality that our vacation is over.  This is especially hard to do when your kids wake up at 3am ready to go for the day. After I recover, I have more trip wrap-up posts to come, along with more blogging on family-friendly cities. For now, in the interest of getting sleep, I am just posting the playspace photos that I promised to send out. Truly amazing stuff, those Parisians and their playspaces for children.

Here is a slideshow with some of the favorites we came across during our three days in Paris.  Click here to view with the captions.

JE AIME PARIS PARKS AND PLAZAS

We arrived in Paris Sunday night and have relished every minute of our time here in the city. For many tourists, coming to Paris means strolling down along the Seine late at night, spending hours getting lost in museums, and sipping a cafe au lait while reading a novel in a street-side cafe. While these things usually go by the wayside when traveling with youngsters, Paris with children can still be just as delightful.  Paris is a dreamland for children, filled with amazing parks, children playspaces, engrossing public art, and lively public plazas.

Jardin des Tuileries

Joined by my two-year-old nephew and sister-in-law who are here with us from Zurich, we spent the morning yesterday at the Jardin des Tuileries, one of world's oldest public parks. The park is filled with child-oriented attractions, including a pond where kids push boats around, a carousel, built-in trampolines, public art that kids can touch and climb on, and a see-saw with other play equipment.

In the afternoon, while my nephew napped back at our apartment with my sister-in-law, the rest of us fit in a visit to the Louvre, although within an hour my kids reached their threshold for "viewing art without being able to touch it or run around."  Our favorite part of the day was the time we spent in the evening hanging out at the Stravinksy Fountain plaza. The kids loved running in and out of the moving water spray from one of the fountains (in the shape of red lips), we all loved watching the public street performers and people passing through, and the kids even fit in some time kicking around their ball with a Parisian boy until the ball ended up in the fountain.

I have been taking lots of photos of Paris playspaces for children. Will post them in a set tonight (after we finish our last day here). Onto Texas tomorrow.

Jardin des Tuileries

In front of the Louvre

Stravinksy Fountain. Delightful!

Michael Jackson impersonator at Stravinksy Plaza