#ANDY PARKS AND REC NONPROFIT FREE#

Park shutdowns have been criticized somewhat for cutting people off from the benefits of publicly available outdoor areas, disproportionately impacting lower income individuals with limited access to green spaces. In response to these concerns, some states instituted park shutdowns, entirely preventing people from using these open spaces. Furthermore, parks are often unsupervised and lack guidelines for visitor capacity, making it difficult to regulate their usage. Parks, especially those tailored towards children, have many shared surfaces, which has been hypothesized to result in increased disease transmission. Because of their function as recreational spaces for diverse communities, policymakers worried that parks could serve as transmission hotspots for SARS-CoV-2. The possibly increased appeal of parks made them the focus of policy attention in the United States during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, parks may serve an important–and as of yet unquantified–function for people in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, parks can be quite expansive, allowing for safe enjoyment while maintaining social distancing (1). Parks and green spaces more generally are known to have positive impacts on mental health, with demonstrated mental health benefits.

#ANDY PARKS AND REC NONPROFIT FREE#

Public parks have always served a critical function as free recreational spaces, particularly for low income and immigrant communities. As a result, people have had to seek out alternative means of recreation, both for themselves and for their children, and of managing their mental and physical health. These disruptions have resulted in profound increases in stress, anxiety, and depression. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many aspects of human social life, limiting recreational opportunities and affecting peoples’ financial security. As such, we should continue to invest in public parks and to explore the role of parks in managing public health and psychological well-being. Furthermore, our results suggest that policies targeting human behavior can be effective and are largely reversible. Altogether, our results indicate that parks continue to provide crucial services to society, particularly in stressful times when opportunities for recreation are limited.

Visitation then returned to elevated pre-shutdown levels when closed parks were allowed to reopen.

The subsequent park shutdown order caused visitation in closed parks to decline by 76.1% while parks that remained open continued to experience elevated visitation levels. We find that park visitation increased by 63.4% with the onset of the pandemic. We compare park usage during four discrete stages of spring 2020: (1) before the pandemic began, (2) during the beginning of the pandemic, (3) during the New Jersey governor’s state-wide park shutdown order, and (4) following the lifting of the shutdown. Here we use geotagged social media data from state, county, and local parks throughout New Jersey to examine whether park visitation increased when the COVID-19 pandemic began and whether park shutdown orders were effective at deterring park usage. Despite the documented benefits of parks, however, many states have instituted park shutdown orders due to fears that public parks could facilitate SARS-CoV-2 transmission. As such, parks may be crucial for how people have handled effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the increasingly limited recreational opportunities, widespread financial uncertainty, and consequent heightened anxiety. Public parks serve an important societal function as recreational spaces for diverse communities of people, with well documented physical and mental health benefits.

Andy parks and rec nonprofit