PARKS & REC SPECIAL EVENTS
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Enhancing the value of Philadelphia's park system
Philadelphia’s Parks and Recreation (PPR) system contains over 10,000 acres spread across parks large and small throughout the City. PPR’s special events permitting system is the platform for everyone from families, church groups, to national concert and race organizers to hold events in park lands, and presents a vital revenue stream for the Department's operating budget.
Following our work with the City and Parks & Recreation under Rebuild, Interface Studio was engaged by PPR to apply an analytical lens to the hundreds of permitted sites and event types throughout the city, develop a methodology for identifying strategic areas for improvement, and develop concept plans at select sites for improvements that would yield both increased enjoyment of the space and an improved revenue stream from permitted events.
We started with a deep dive into 10+ years of permit data.
Our analysis revealed hidden insights about how the system functioned en masse, including trends in the average number of participants per site, the most and least popular permit locations, and the amount of revenue generated by different types of events across the system.
Next, we built on these findings with nearly 3,000 survey responses from across the City.
We sought to build on the results of the data analysis with the launch of a citywide park use survey. Garnering nearly 3,000 survey responses, this tool helped the team understand the site features that were most important to users (and potential users) across different event types.
We used these insights to create concept plans to improve select sites for special events.
Lastly, our team used the insights gleaned from our research and analysis to inform concept plans for several sites in the park system, including everything from large, regional parks to small neighborhood-serving sites.
