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Artificial intelligence, four-day work weeks and cricket top the list

It is that time of year again — the top trends in parks and recreation for 2024 and beyond are here. Feel free to nod knowingly, wonder, or scratch your head in puzzlement.

Technology and Parks and Recreation

Artificial Intelligence

How much of a disruptive innovation will artificial intelligence (AI) be for parks and recreation? That is a burning question for a lot of people in the park and recreation industry, and the answer is not clear yet. However, it can be said with certainty that AI will affect virtually everything we do from this point forward. Here are some of the ways: AI will enable us to answer phone calls, respond to the public more quickly, write speeches, summarize meetings, prepare reports, count visitors, monitor building systems, surveil parks, provide security, plan new parks and massively save energy. This is not a years-in-the-future blue-sky prediction about some far-off trend. It is already happening, and at breakneck speed.

AI chatbots are already improving the efficiency of local governments in responding to residents’ inquiries. AI algorithms are helping to process information at rates much faster than humans can, allowing faster decision making and better services to the public. AI-assisted analytics are improving traffic flow, monitoring community health and improving public safety, freeing workers for other tasks and responsibilities. There is little doubt that AI will bring disruptive innovation to parks and recreation on a scale that we have never seen before.

Privacy, What Privacy?

There are more than 1,000 location-aware apps tracking your mobile phone and providing a real-time location log no matter where you go. The average smartphone, likely a device similar to yours, has about 25 location-aware apps installed on it reporting your location. Some of these apps report your location hundreds or even thousands of times a day! This personally identifiable data is aggregated, matched with other data, like your spending habits, purchasing histories and other very personal data, and is sold on the open market by more than 4,000 data brokers to anyone who wants to buy it. It is a $200 billion a year market, growing by leaps and bounds.

Park and recreation agencies might want to purchase such location-aware data about their customers to better identify who is using their parks, where people are coming from, and what they did before and after they visited their parks. However, there is a sharp downside to public agencies obtaining and using such personally identifiable information — the public strongly objects to such invasions of personal privacy.

But there may be a good solution at hand. Ian Ross, the director of Civic at Placer.ai, a location analytics company, says, “We are a privacy-first company. The data we obtain is totally anonymous and aggregated. Our partners that provide data to us only provide us device latitude and longitude, nothing else. We get a location, not who owns a device. Further, our 150 data scientists verify all data that we collect, and only then do we provide it to our customers after a three-day delay. It is our hard-and-fast rule that protects personal privacy.”

Placer.ai’s huge data set covers the entire United States and is accurate from a starting date of January 1, 2017. This six-year look-back window gives agencies, local governments, nonprofits and business customers an unparalleled ability to analyze geolocated devices in a variety of ways, such as how many people visited parks on a given day, for example, or the traffic flow along roadways into parks, or how much time people spent in parks.

“Public funds invested in parks are often unheralded,” says Ross. “With our data, we can show that investments in parks directly correlate to benefits to the local economy.” He cites the example of a unique creative event, called Flower Piano, that takes place at Golden Gate Park of San Francisco’s Department of Recreation and Parks, in which a dozen pianos are spread throughout the 55-acre botanical garden for people to play scheduled and open performances. Local businesses vociferously complained about parking spots being taken away near their restaurants during the five weekends of the event. Using Placer.ai data, they were able to show a direct increase of 35 percent in visits to local restaurants because of the Flower Piano event, proving to surprised restaurant owners the direct economic impact of the park on nearby businesses.

The Impacts of Climate Change 

It is becoming increasingly apparent that we are approaching, if not already living in, a post-climate change world. Parks and recreation must collectively adapt to this existential challenge. Despite concerted efforts to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) to stave off irreversible, and even devastating, impacts from climate change, average temperatures will continue to rise for decades, even if we progressively reduce the conditions causing the temperature rise. This has many implications for public and worker safety from extreme heat, and long-term health conditions that will last a lifetime from heat stress.

Fortunately, how Americans view the threats from climate change is changing. A new survey by the Pew Research Center shows that most Americans believe that climate change is harming people and that conditions will likely get worse during their lifetimes. In addition, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that climate change will cause significant environmental harm, including the extinction of some wildlife species. Six in 10 people think heat waves will cause people to die, and nearly 6 in 10 believe that rising seas will cause migration away from coastal areas. However, only about 40 percent of Americans think that it will make much difference in their communities — a major disconnect with the topline beliefs about how much climate change will impact our nation.

Surprisingly, however, there is also good news in the report: The rate of climate change is slowing despite 2023 being the hottest year ever recorded. Carbon emissions in the United States are down 12 percent between 2005 and 2019. The massive increase in ebike use globally is reducing oil consumption by 1 million barrels per day! Costs for renewable energy have plummeted. Solar energy costs have declined 70 percent and wind energy costs have decreased 90 percent. Eighty percent of new energy sources are from renewables. Bad news may abound from weather catastrophes and extreme heat, but for the first time, there are some promising climate-change signs as well.

One critical strategy for communities to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change is to enhance the means of self-protection, and one of the best ways to accomplish that is to become more resilient to both catastrophic spike events and long-term climate trends. Parks and recreation plays a vital role in helping communities achieve that goal through flood protection, retention of stormwater, green infrastructure parks, and protection against both long-term climate trends and single events.

This connection of parks to climate resiliency will increasingly become one of the most lasting proofs of just how essential parks are to all communities. Parks, from the smallest to the largest, will play an increasingly important role in 2024 and beyond in mitigating urban heat-island effects, preventing destructive effects of stormwater and flooding, measurably improving air quality in cities and densely populated urban areas, and improving community health, livability and sustainability.

Park and recreation agencies are already adapting to extreme heat. In Austin, Texas, for example, running clubs have shifted their training runs to take place in the dark, well before dawn. Phoenix Parks and Recreation is now leading night hikes to take advantage of lower temperatures. Running clubs in Tempe, Arizona, time their early morning runs to start at 5 a.m. Kids’ daylight activities generally take place only under shade shelters or at shaded playgrounds. And some agencies are experimenting with earlier and later open hours to better address impacts of extreme heat.

The Workplace

Health and Wellness

Most of the focus of park and recreation agencies in improving health and well-being is directed toward the communities they serve. However, Allison Colman, NRPA’s senior director of programs, says the park and recreation industry will see an equally heavy focus on both workforce development and staff well-being in 2024.

“The profession will look inward,” Colman says, “and take steps to better prioritize the mental health and well-being of our own workforce.” She points to the results of the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Work in America Survey that shows people want to work for an organization that values their psychological well-being, provides support for mental health and respects work/life boundaries.

Gallup’s influential State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report shows a definite uptick in employee engagement since the pandemic ended, but the engagement of remote workers to the mission and purpose of their organization has fallen to a record low.

A Four-Day Work Week?

The idea of the four-day work week is gaining steam across America. According to Bankrate, a financial service and comparison company, 81 percent of the full-time workforce support a four-day work week and more than 90 percent of younger workers support more flexible work options. Oshan Jarow, a Future Perfect Fellow at Vox, writes in the November 9, 2023 issue that support from workers for a four-day work week has never been higher and that demonstration programs internationally have shown the benefits outweigh the negatives. “The word is good — employees are happier, and employers seem to exhibit the same amount of productivity they do with five-day [work] weeks.”

Across these experiments, the results tell a similar story: Paying people the same amount for less time worked leaves them feeling happier and healthier and often boosts business, too. Studies have shown no declines in productivity or work program. But there can be unintended consequences. While the four-day work week could lower carbon emissions and reduce traffic congestion, it would have a negative effect on public transportation systems and the increased public use of local park and recreation services would affect agency work programs and budgets.

There May Be a Four-Day Work Week in Your Future, But You Are Going Back to the Office

A four-day work week might sound great to workers, but 95 percent of companies with more than 100 employees plan to bring people back to the office in 2024, according to Jon Cooper, CEO and founder at Overalls, a concierge-like tech and financial benefit company. The pandemic may have led employers to tolerate and even encourage full-remote work, but that era is over. However, despite the firm employer conviction to bring employees back to the office, 65 percent of employees want to continue to work from home, a trend that points to a large disconnect between employee and employer preference of where people will work from.

Recreational Program Trends

Walking Trips Down 36 Percent Nationwide

The pandemic caused many people to spend more time in parks and walking on trails, but paradoxically, since the pandemic began, walking trips have declined precipitously nationwide.

A new report published by Streetlight Data, a transportation analytics firm, finds that walking activity nationwide declined an average of 36 percent since 2019. In some Midwest urban areas, walking trips have declined up to 50 percent, a shocking turn toward sedentary behavior.

One interesting correlation about the decline of walking, says Emily Adler, director of content for Streetlight, in Bloomberg’s urban news site, City Lab, is that “If walking is declining less in warm weather metros, or coming back faster, it suggests that walking is becoming primarily a form of recreation.” Adler speculates that more recreational walking is good for public health outcomes but less so for walking as a mode of transportation to destinations.

The implications for parks and recreation are significant. Recreation programmers, health staff and trail managers should have a ready audience to promote the much-needed health benefits of walking by offering more guided and self-guided walking activities in 2024. Other program trends, such as family engagement activities, outdoor youth programs and senior walks, are
tailor-made for parks and recreation to lead the way through walking.

More Pickleball – More, More, More

Like Godzilla rising from the sea, the recreation behemoth pickleball has still not slowed its seemingly unstoppable march through cities as the fastest-growing recreational sport in the nation.

Along with all the good that pickleball brings, the noise factor is drowning out even residents of communities who are most willing to accept the good about the sport: healthful active recreation, great for older adults, all ages can play — what’s not to like? Unfortunately, conflicts over noise are growing. Neighbors are suing neighbors. Public hearings in some localities have become so heated that law enforcement has had to intervene.

As a result, park and recreation agencies have become much more careful when deciding where to site pickleball courts. Some agencies are now conducting sophisticated sound studies when planning new courts, and are looking at sound abatement measures that will reduce the incessant “thwack-thwack” noise that travels improbable distances from pickleball courts. Centennial, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, has just lifted a six-month moratorium on new courts and passed first-of-their-kind regulations that prohibit any courts within 250 feet of a nearby home’s property line. Also, any new courts will require a city permit within 600 feet of a home and noise must be under a 47-decibel limit.

In one unusual twist, the conservation group Birds Connect Seattle has objected to the conversion of old unused tennis courts in Lincoln Park into pickleball courts by Seattle Parks and Recreation because they believe the noise will harm certain species of birds, including hawks, owls, ravens and eagles that nest and roost in nearby big trees in the park.

The group also objects to the potential prospect of installing lights on the courts at some future date, which they believe would be especially harmful to the birds. However, this hasn’t deterred advocates for more pickleball courts, who feel they have been promised more public courts soon.

Seattle Parks and Recreation Director Anthony-Paul “AP” Diaz explains that existing nearby tennis courts in Lincoln Park have been very popular with older adults from a senior community that lives nearby. The only way to provide pickleball courts was to convert some of the tennis courts, which was not a good solution. A staff member suggested repurposing some unused and in disrepair tennis courts that were used for maintenance storage as new pickleball courts. “We thought it was a win-win,” says Diaz. However, when the bird nesting and roosting issue came to light, that created a new problem. To begin to resolve the conflict, Diaz has committed the department to doing a sound study to see if the new noise would affect the birds. Where the new pickleball courts would be located, he explains, is already an active recreation area with daytime noise from athletic fields, an outdoor summer pool, and aircraft landing nearby. “We want to protect nature too,” Diaz says. He notes newly approved sound-deadening equipment recently endorsed by USA Pickleball could reduce the noise factor by paddles and balls by up to 50 percent. He has called a community meeting for all to express their concerns.

Cricket Explodes 

In the North Texas city of Allen, assistant recreation supervisor Greg Dunn says they are trying to meet the needs of the community, especially the rapidly growing Southeast Asian population, which has nearly doubled in just a few years. The surging popularity of cricket has made cricket one of the most popular sports in the region and led nearby Grand Prairie, Texas, to approve a long-term lease with Major League Cricket to redevelop the former Airhogs baseball stadium into a 7,200-person capacity cricket-specific stadium that opened this year. “Youth cricket is taking off in the Dallas-Fort Worth area as well,” says Dunn, citing the example of the Crown Cricket Academy. “We have made a huge push to be more inclusive in parks and recreation. I took the NRPA Equity in Practice course earlier this year, and I try to include the principles from that course in all that I do.”

Recreation Programs That Are Hot in 2024

Family engagement nights, seasonal festivals, fitness programming, holiday karaoke, “eldertainment,” games and activities for “kidults,” and partnerships with libraries are all hot program trends for 2024, according to observations from park and recreation staff around the country. The growth of new seasonal programming and festivals leading to the hiring of more part-time program staff is a strong trendline as well, said a group of park and recreation staff at a recent Virginia Park and Recreation Society trends discussion.

Communities Going to the Dogs…Willingly

Dog ownership surged during the pandemic and now comprises 45 percent of all families. Eighty-five percent of dog-owning families consider their dogs to be members of the family, according to a Forbes Advisor survey, and dog owners make “professional, financial and lifestyle choices” for their dogs. Dog parks remain the fastest-growing type of park and off-leash dog parks are the fastest-growing type of dog park. Even so, says Beth Miller, CEO of Wagtown, a national group that advocates for responsible dog-friendly people and communities, their survey of park and recreation leaders showed that “the top three barriers to great dog park experiences are available land, financial support and subject matter expertise.”

Quick Takes

Robot Dogs

Older adults, are you ready to take your robot dog for a walk in the park? This is not so far-fetched. A Hasbro-affiliated company, called Ageless Innovation, is doing a brisk business in selling animatronic dogs and cats to this consumer demographic who, from the company’s promo video, are agog over how cute they are. Get ready for older adults in their micromobility motorized four-wheelers taking their robot dogs out for an excursion on your trails.

A Talking, Self-Cleaning Public Restroom

Providing clean, safe and sanitary restrooms for the public has been a monumental challenge for public parks, especially in dense urban areas or in isolated urban parks without staff supervision. Self-cleaning toilets of various types have been used in Europe and Asia for decades, but they are now appearing in U.S. urban parks. An all-weather, self-cleaning toilet graced by public art was installed in Heartside Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan, this past spring. A voice message warns patrons when their time is up, and a sensor ensures that no lingerers will get a human car wash. Disinfectant spray washes all surfaces, and a self-locking door prevents entry during the periodic cleaning cycle.

Self-cleaning toilets are not inexpensive, however, costing from $100,000 up to $500,000 for a multiple unit, but in certain urban locations they may be a great choice for public restrooms. “The best thing about it is to have all the usage data,” says Karie Enriquez, professional engineer and project manager for this installation. “It has been a big learning curve for us, learning the programming of the unit, but overall, it has been a positive experience,” explains Enriquez.

An Elegant Meal in the Park

Drone-delivered pizza and beer in parks? So passé. A study in the Journal of Open Innovation, Technology, Market and Complexity surveyed potential customers about drone delivery of higher-end restaurant fare. The food service industry is energized by the idea of much more rapid delivery of prepared meals delivered anywhere, and potential customers love the idea of on-time delivery of piping hot meals to remote locations. Are you ready for drone-delivered candlelight dinners at overlooks, beaches and Instagram-worthy locations in your parks? Prepare to capitalize on this trend. It won’t be long in coming.

Richard J. Dolesh is NRPA’s retired Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Editor at Large for Parks & Recreation magazine.