Photo by flipperman 75

Yes, we’ve been bested again by New York.

According to a report by the Trust for Public Land, New York City leads the country in terms of parkland as a percentage of city area, coming in at 38,000 acres, or 19.5 percent of the city’s land. The District, though, is a close second, with 7,400 acres, or 19 percent of our land. Arlington squeezed into the top 10 with 1,800 acres, or 11.4 percent.

When it comes to acres per resident, we’re way above New York — 12.4 acres for us to 4.5 acres for them. We also lead the country in terms of sheer amount spent on parks, both operational and capital, coming in at $224 million for 2009 — or $375 per resident.

Other fun facts from the report: D.C. is third in the country in terms of the number of recreation and senior centers, 73, or 2.4 per 20,000 residents, and we’re fifth in number of pools, coming in at 36, or six per 100,000 residents. Portland has the most baseball diamonds and off-leash dog parks, Madison wins on basketball hoops and Chula Vista takes home the prize for skate parks. (Nothing on velodromes, sadly, but we’ll eventually get our first!)

An interesting breakdown of of our parkland: 6,776 acres of it is federal, and only 688 acres is city-owned. In New York, by contrast, 29,000 of the city’s 38,000 acres of parkland are owned and run by the city itself. That the District has so much federal land is both wonderful and terrible.

If you look at a place like Rock Creek Park, it’s certainly wonderful. But if you consider all of the small, under-utilized and oft-ignored neighborhood parks that the city has no control over, it becomes clear that our city officials face challenges that few other cities do.