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Just how valuable are America’s iconic urban parks?

Just how valuable are America’s iconic urban parks?.

We all value and love parks, especially iconic ones like New York’s Central Park or Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, but what are they really worth?

Using a rather straight-forward, but potentially overly simple calculation, data gatherers determined the real estate value of 10 of America’s most iconic urban parks. While not yet complete, one can imagine that Cincinnati’s Smale Riverfront Park would rival some of these parks in terms of real estate value once fully built out. More from Urbanful:

The existential value of public parks to city dwellers has fueled their expansion and sheltered these urban oases from encroaching neighborhoods. No developer will ever be able to purchase Central Park because it is priceless to New Yorkers; however that doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting hypothetical.

Suppose Central Park was developable. This would change the entire fabric of the city, making specific property values inaccurate because these values are predicated on the existence of the park in the first place. Working forward from this assumption, apply broad averages for the development pattern and a rough estimate for total value can be established.

Using this example, Central Park has an area of 843 acres, or 36,721,080 sq ft. According to Trulia, New York has an average property value of $1,396 per sq ft, assuming mixed use development. This means, as a single story development, Central Park would be worth over $51 billion. The calculation is not quite finished yet. Using an estimate of 10 stories for average building height, the park would really be worth a staggering $510 billion based on this estimate.

By Randy A. Simes

Randy is an award-winning urban planner who founded UrbanCincy in May 2007. He grew up on Cincinnati’s west side in Covedale, and graduated from the University of Cincinnati’s nationally acclaimed School of Planning in June 2009. In addition to maintaining ownership and serving as the managing editor for UrbanCincy, Randy has worked professionally as a planning consultant throughout the United States, Korea and the Middle East. After brief stints in Atlanta and Chicago, he currently lives in the Daechi neighborhood of Seoul’s Gangnam district.