Shaping the Future: How Digital Tools Transform Parks and Greenways

This article originally appeared in NRPA, Parks & Recreation magazine, December 2025.

Beneath all the hype and worry around generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) lies a real opportunity for park and recreation leaders. Not only can they and their teams work smarter, faster and more efficiently, but also they can engage park users and the public in more meaningful ways, which builds trust in the long run.

The latest digital breakthroughs can be brought into two broad categories. First are the tools available to collect data on park conditions, usage and more. Data from sensors, cell phones, cameras and automated vehicle locators give parks departments access to enormous increases in the amount, timeliness and sources of data they can use to manage assets and plan improvements.

Second is the explosion in tools available to help officials and community leaders turn the avalanche of data into actionable insights. Generative AI enhances the analytical capabilities of cities and counties of all sizes, allowing leaders who may not be data experts themselves to identify trends and outliers in vast datasets of park data.

This article promotes a vision for future park planning and management, highlighting promising applications by leading agencies that utilize these technologies to design, maintain, and enrich parks.

Intelligent Planning: Designing Parks That Work for Everyone

I vividly remember one of my first park-oriented community meetings as a new mayor in Indianapolis in the 1990s. We had pledged to invest $50 million in new parks and trails. I started the meeting by asking residents in the room what they wanted to see. The first speaker gruffly responded that he wasn’t a designer, and I needed to help him understand the options first. 

He had a good point: It can be difficult for people who aren’t professionals to imagine what a park should look like or how it should function. In those days, presentations from whiteboards with drawings would spark community feedback, leading to a subsequent meeting with updated drawings — likely sparking another round of feedback. Now, GenAI tools enable anyone to quickly create and refine visualizations, facilitating real-time, all-encompassing design.

Digital tools change the way officials gather information, share it with the community and understand the interactions with other important values. In planning, many departments now access “Human Movement” data, which is drawn from aggregated and anonymized cell phone location tracking. For example, academic experts in a 2022 research note for the  Landscape and Urban Planning journal utilized cell phone data from 10 million daily active park users in New York City to better understand where and when people used parks, points of social interaction, and the effect of amenities on park experiences. 

These new tools can also significantly improve the quality of engagement by improving understanding and feedback. According to a summary by the Lincoln Institute, Columbus, Ohio, as part of a new bus rapid transit corridor, provided immersive bus tours attended by hundreds of community stakeholders. Additionally, QR codes on bus shelters made the plans accessible to those unable to take the guided tour.

Layered data, combined with new tools for understanding, unlocks insights. LA County Parks, in its comprehensive parks needs assessments, revealed stark differences in the accessibility and quality of parks and open space, as well as the need to both conserve and restore lands. Sheela Mathai Kleinknecht, planning section head at LA County Parks, explains, “We looked at the county through different lenses, focusing on social and transportation barriers, and health and environmental vulnerability. These layered insights enable officials to understand how some communities have access to parks and open spaces, still, they are in poor condition, and other communities may lack amenities such as swimming pools, splash pads, playgrounds and ballfields.” 

Similarly, Tucson’s Tree Equity Score analyzes canopy, heat severity, and the percentage of nearby residents who are low-income, seniors, or children to prioritize the placement of one million trees.   These examples demonstrate the potential of digital analysis, particularly when powered by Gen AI, enabling many more park officials and community leaders to contribute solutions.   

Next-Generation Maintenance: Proactive, Efficient, and Sustainable

No area of parks will be more affected by technology than asset management. I am reminded of the time as mayor when I stopped to ask a city vendor why he was mowing an area with very little grass. He responded that the work order system assigned him to cut this park every other Wednesday. Today, helping workers know where and when to focus their efforts can be much more refined. Moisture sensors will indicate when the grass needs to be cut, and with the human movement data, managers will schedule mowing when a field is least likely to be in use.  

Massively more information can inform decisions. Park inspections, video and drone images, and geo-tagged photos submitted by residents provide a continuous flow of maintenance warnings. GenAI and GIS interfaces can transform images of items like graffiti or overflowing trash cans into maintenance requests, triggering real-time service tickets and routing them to the correct crews. 

Devices in machines, such as vibration sensors on pumps, HVAC systems or vehicles, can predict failures before they happen. Sensors track the condition of playground equipment, lighting, irrigation and trails, all of which enable timely inspections and alerts. Field workers who respond not only have an early warning, but also information about the required parts. Data streams from automated vehicle locators help officials manage assets and understand their utilization. 

Breakthroughs occur when agencies combine various sources of information, organize them spatially and then take action informed by analysis. That’s what the state of Tennessee’s “One Smart Park” application does. Utilizing a cloud-based geographic information system, the application enables park rangers and managers to track everything from trail conditions to the locations of invasive species. The application also serves as virtual scaffolding for sharing important information and approaches with other land-holding agencies, such as the Department of Agriculture and the Wildlife Resources Agency.

Carlsbad, California officials demonstrate how tools, such as Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (“light GeoAI”), when applied to GPS devices, maps and satellite imagery, produces efficiency. AI-optimized clustering and scheduling analysis reduces the time it takes a field employee to perform inspections. Key performance indicators include cost, responsiveness, community satisfaction, time management, and the elimination of obsolete processes. Light GeoAI reduced the price of the inspection and verification program by 44% and the time to complete verifications by 75%.

Elevating User Experience and Safety

These digital improvements matter most when they improve the experience of park users. Many departments today utilize some form of a customer-facing bot, such as the City of Los Angeles' clever Ranger Rap. The next set of breakthroughs utilizes dynamic, spatially organized data, delivered to mobile apps and via QR codes, to provide visitors with real-time maps, updates on closures, and accessibility information. Des Moines’ park planners, Derek Hansen and Colby Fangman, explain that “We’re getting to a granular, individual facility-level geofence that helps us understand who’s using the park and how… we can match that against shelter rentals and to determine maintenance schedules.” In Des Moines, which has nearly 70 miles of popular park trails, users can sign up to get “Know Before You Go” alerts for all trails, either by text or via Facebook. “Every decision now is community-informed and data-driven,” Hansen says. “It’s made us smarter, more intentional, and more trusted decision-makers.”

Seattle Parks utilizes multiple digital and in-person methods to gather feedback and communicate project progress. For capital projects, it incorporates the Social Pinpoint platform, a public-facing project hub featuring interactive maps, surveys and real-time updates on projects. Seattle utilizes ArcGIS to provide an interactive trail map, as well as tools for operations teams to update trail conditions and prioritize scheduling maintenance. Oliver Bazinet, Planning and Capital Development advisor, observes that we utilize Power BI to extract data from our asset management and work order systems to answer even basic questions, such as "where are the open restrooms?” 

Montgomery Parks in Maryland expanded the focus on users to include access for those with disabilities. The National Federation of the Blind, in a design meeting with Parks, emphasized the importance of descriptive text linking each park’s location to its amenities, which would greatly benefit blind users. Consequently, the team is currently exploring the most effective technologies to deliver “directional alt text” for users with low vision. Montgomery Parks’ approach of combining internal and external digital access underscores another key component of digital transformation. By broadly training staff members, rather than relying solely on GIS experts, to analyze the more than 40 layers of data in the new Parks and Trails Atlas, Keegan Clifford, GIS coordinator, helped democratize access to digital solutions, enabling everyone, from field technicians to vision-impaired users, to understand and navigate the county’s park system.

Technology will continue to enhance our ability to create exceptional park and recreational experiences. To do so, though, leaders must focus not just on technology, but also on empowering frontline staff, investing in data literacy, fostering vendor interoperability and making the return-on-investment case for resources. Agencies will need to protect privacy, build geospatial data foundations and create a culture of continuous, analytical problem-solving. Yet once hard-pressed parks and recreation officials take these steps, they will be able to utilize digital tools, barely imaginable even five years ago, to build and maintain even better livable spaces for their communities.