Colorado Recreation Access Map
10-Minute Walk and 10-Mile Drive proximity analysis to open space, parks, trails, and water
1.2 million Coloradans lack access to open space, parks, trails, and water within a 10-minute walk of home.
This tool houses two proximity analyses conducted by Trust for Public Land to determine who does and does not have access to close-to-home recreational resources: a 10-minute walk and a 10-mile drive.
The recreational resources studied were open space, parks, trails, and water access locations. 10-minute walk and 10-mile drive service areas were built along the road network and extend out from these recreational resources. Demographics of the residents within and outside of the proximity standards were calculated.
Cities and counties are prioritized based on the population that lacks access to recreational resources:
- Cities are prioritized based on the 10-minute walk access standard
- The biggest gaps: a combined need index of total residents as well as percent of city population outside a 10-minute walk of any recreation
- The highest need: the number of Disproportionately Impacted Community residents that lack access to any recreation within a 10-minute walk of home
- Counties are prioritized based on the 10-mile drive standard
- The biggest gaps: the number of residents outside a 10-mile drive to any recreation
- The highest need: the number of Disproportionately Impacted Community residents that lack access to any recreation within a 10-mile drive of home.
What is a Disproportionately Impacted Community?
This analysis uses the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment definition of “Disproportionately Impacted Communities”. Disproportionately impacted communities include:
- Low-income communities: Census block groups where more than 40% of households are at or below 200% of the federal poverty line.
- Communities of color: Census block groups where more than 40% of the population identify as anything other than non-Hispanic White.
- Housing cost-burdened communities: Census block groups where more than 50% of households spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs like rent or mortgage payments.
- Linguistically isolated communities: Census block groups where more than 20% of the population live in households where all adults speak a language other than English and speak English less than very well.
- Historically marginalized communities: Communities with a history of environmental racism created through redlining or anti-Black, anti-Hispanic, anti-immigrant, or anti-Indigenous laws, policies, or practices that continue to experience present-day environmental health disparities.
- Cumulatively impacted communities: Communities where multiple factors, including socioeconomic stressors, vulnerable populations, disproportionate environmental burdens, vulnerability to environmental degradation or climate change, and lack of public participation may act cumulatively to affect health and the environment and may contribute to persistent environmental health disparities. Cumulatively impacted communities can be presumptively identified in one of two ways:
- They are in a census block group with a Colorado EnviroScreen score above the 80th percentile; or,
- They are in a census tract that the federal Council on Environmental Quality’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool identifies as disadvantaged.
- Tribal lands: The Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Reservations.
- Mobile Home Communities: Areas that meet the Department of Local Affairs’ definition of a Mobile Home Park.