Have You Used your 12.4 Acres of Park Lately?

For every 1,000 residents of the District there is a corresponding 12.4 acres of park land available, according to the 2011 City Park Facts report from the Trust for Public Land. The majority of D.C.'s 7,464 acres of park land is made up of 6,776 acres of federal government land. As a percentage of parks to total land, D.C. was second only to New York City for high density cities.

The report shows that the 100 largest cities added more than 120 parks in the past year.

Georgetown is home to a mixture of both D.C. and federal park land. Facilities like those at are maintained and run by the District—with the help of local fundraisers like the Friends of Volta Park. The federal government maintains other Georgetown green space like and the .

DCist's take on the report was that the high percentage of federal land is both good and bad:

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.

This conflict will once again arise in Georgetown at a meeting Tuesday when the National Park Service will hold an open house on . In this instance, the NPS could potentially hand over park land in a swap for property owned by other D.C. landholders, like . GU has on the Potomac River to serve its men's and women's crew teams.

Editor's note: This article previously stated that there were 12.4 acres of park land per resident. That was incorrect. There are 12.4 acres per 1,000 residents. We just got a whole lot closer on the frisbee field. Thanks to the Patch reader who pointed out this issue.