Book Review: Parks and Recreation System Planning: a New Approach for Creating Sustainable, Resilient Communities
By: Elijah Kordieh Mensah
Book Review: Parks and Recreation System Planning: a New Approach for Creating Sustainable, Resilient Communities
Written By: David Barth
David Barth draws upon the words of Peter Harnik, retired director of the Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence, who said, “Parks seem relatively simple and straightforward. In fact, they are immensely complicated.” This quote sets the tone for Barth’s critical reexamination of how public spaces are planned and valued in contemporary society. He continued that “They require math plus horticulture, hydrology, psychology, sociology, and communication.” (p. 17). Barth builds from this point, not to simplify it but to argue that our fragmented, outdated planning systems are failing to respond to the growing demands placed on parks and recreation infrastructure. He is less concerned with defending parks as amenities and more interested in reasserting them as essential assets that can anchor resilience, sustainability, and social cohesion when planned comprehensively. Rather than continuing to treat parks as isolated service units, he advocates for their integration into what he calls the broader “public realm”, encompassing transportation corridors, green infrastructure, civic institutions, historic and cultural sites and utility systems.
This is not a theoretical stance. As he points out, parks and recreation systems already account for up to 50 percent of land in many communities like Norfolk, Virginia, yet are rarely planned to their full potential. The book takes this planning gap seriously, proposing a technical framework and a shift in mindset that repositions parks as adaptive systems capable of meeting both ecological and human needs in a time of mounting social and environmental stress.
Drawing on decades of experience in landscape architecture and municipal planning, Barth challenges the conventional view of parks as standalone recreational sites. He argues instead for a systems-based perspective in which parks function as part of a “plexus”, a term he uses to describe the interwoven network of public assets that includes streets, stormwater basins, greenways, utility corridors, and civic institutions. “The ability of the public realm to generate broad community benefits,” he writes, “cannot be realized without coordinated planning... very few communities plan, design, and manage their public realm as a plexus” (p. 35). This underpins the central point of Barth’s argument that parks must be planned as multifunctional and adaptive capable of addressing today’s social, economic and environmental challenges.
The urgency of Barth’s intervention cannot be overstated. His work arrives at a moment when many Western communities are grappling simultaneously with drought, wildfire volatility, rapid demographic shifts, and degraded public infrastructure. These challenges are compounded by a political climate in which federal and state support for planning, conservation, and public space investment is increasingly uncertain. In this context, Barth’s insistence that parks must serve multiple functions and constituencies reads less like a suggestion and more like a directive for institutional survival. He makes a compelling case that when parks are strategically designed, they can mitigate urban flooding, buffer extreme heat, support biodiversity corridors, promote physical and mental health, and catalyze economic activity. It is not a matter of building more parks, but of planning smarter ones. The task ahead is to design public spaces that transcend agency silos and operate as resilient, multifunctional systems, with each investment pulling
weight across multiple domains.
One of the book’s strengths is its pragmatic organization and the clarity of its planning methodology. Drawing from his own extensive experience in practice and research, as well as lessons distilled from dozens of municipal projects, Barth proposes the Parks and Recreation System Master Plan (PRSMP) as a replicable yet flexible framework. Rooted in the traditions of strategic planning but updated for contemporary complexity, the PRSMP weaves together foundational tools like needs assessments and level-of-service evaluations with forward-looking strategies for implementation, monitoring, and interagency collaboration.
Part I reframes parks as foundational elements of the public realm, not stand-alone amenities. Barth highlights New York City’s High Line, a disused elevated freight rail line converted into a linear park, as a model of how reinvesting in dormant infrastructure can yield layered, lasting returns. Opened in phases beginning in 2009, the High Line now draws over eight million visitors annually and has spurred billions in adjacent real estate investment. Beyond its economic impact, it filters stormwater through planted beds, reduces urban heat, and serves as a vibrant public space for art, recreation, and social connection. For Barth, the High Line exemplifies a High-Performance Public Space (HPPS): infrastructure that simultaneously advances ecological function, civic identity, and urban resilience through integrated, intentional design.
Part II critiques the limitation of conventional planning models and proposes an evolved approach that foregrounds community-specific standards, and long-range visioning. He argues that traditional methods, often rooted in postwar era suburban planning, fail to account for the diverse social, ecological, and economic realities of today’s urban and rural landscapes. He challenges the long-standing reliance on universal benchmarks, such as park acreage per capita or standard facility types, noting that these metrics often obscure more urgent, place-based needs. Instead, he encourages planners to develop context-sensitive service levels that reflect demographic trends, geographic constraints, and community aspirations. In doing so, the planner’s role is not to apply a formula, but to translate local values into actionable strategies that remain responsive over time.
Part III outlines the operational steps required to put this model into action. It begins with conducting triangulated needs assessments and extends to aligning park planning with capital improvement schedules and policy mandates. Barth provides a step-by-step approach that translates high-level visioning into practical, executable strategies, ensuring the plan remains connected to real-world decision-making frameworks. He is especially attentive to implementation, recognizing that plans often fail not from poor design but from a lack of integration across departments, insufficient funding mechanisms, or the absence of sustained political will. By embedding implementation thinking throughout the planning process and not just at the end, David Barth clearly pushes for a model that is visionary and capable of evolving alongside shifting community conditions.
Barth writes with the precision of a seasoned practitioner and the perspective of a systems thinker. His long tenure in public sector consulting and landscape architecture lends the book a grounded, confident voice that speaks directly to professionals navigating the messiness of real- world constraints. What elevates the text is the collection of planning tools, templates, performance metrics, stakeholder strategies and how they are positioned as adaptable rather than prescriptive. He avoids the trap of offering a universal formula, but instead, he provides a flexible framework that local planners can recalibrate to suit their specific institutional and cultural contexts.
About the Reviewer
Elijah Kordieh Mensah earned a Master of Science degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana in May 2025. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental and Safety Engineering from the University of Mines and Technology in Ghana, awarded in 2021. In 2024, Elijah received the Zuuring-MAGIP Graduate GIS Scholarship, which supports thesis research that uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to develop real-world solutions or hypotheses. His academic interests center on applying GIS to address environmental challenges and support the development of sustainable cities. During his time at the University of Montana, Elijah also served as a Co-Director of the Forum for Living with Appropriate Technology (UM FLAT), a student-led organization promoting sustainable living in Missoula, Montana.