Because of the value of the 2017 Parks Action Plan, the City of New Brunswick partners again with the Trust for Public Land (TPL) to update the plan. The team will complete research and interviews to prepare a summary of actions and accomplishments related to the New Brunswick park system. Focus will be on work completed since 2018.
Public engagement and outreach will be a focused effort to reveal and communicate the strengths and opportunities in the New Brunswick park and open space system and set the stage for broader ongoing engagement with non-traditional partners. Engagement will be guided by a Public Outreach and Comment Work Plan.
A new approach is the analysis of anonymized cell phone data to assess visitation patterns at the individual park level and, if data is available, travel patterns from neighborhoods to parks. The park visitation prototype aims to be a data-driven and interactive planning tool for the city to incorporate mobility data into park system planning and evaluation. To calibrate the anonymized cellphone data, Rutgers students will conduct in-person user counts at five selected parks.