"Can Cities Fill the Swimming Pool Equity Gap?" is too narrow a question. The question is how can we plan systematically for community amenities.

Bloomberg CityLab has a story, "Can Cities Fill the Swimming Pool Equity Gap?," about inequitable distribution of civic assets, specifically swimming pools, with examples from Long Beach, California. 

Belmont Pool complex on the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach, California.  Photo: Orange County Register.

It mentions that the city aims to spend almost $100 million to rebuild and expand its Belmont pool on the beach ("What will the new Belmont Pool look like? That’s up for debate," Orange County Register) while low income areas of the city have no outdoor pools at all.  That process has been underway for 7 years.

But it's really two questions. Equity.  And systematic parks and recreation planning.

The first is the equity question.  That communities either provide more resources to more well off areas and/or that well off areas consume "privatized amenities" at community swim clubs, etc., and fail to ensure equal access and provision  ("An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs," 2017).

The PG Pool isn't an upscale club.  It has community areas and a down home vibe.

Having access to civic amenities like parks, libraries, recreational facilities, etc., is a key element of the "social urbanism" approach ("On the ‘Medellin Miracle’ and the ‘Social Urbanism’ Model," LabGov).

And was a key element of one of Britain's only successful regeneration approaches, called New Deal Communities, under the Blair Labour Government ("Reviewing the New Deal for Communities programme," Guardian, 2001, Turnaround: How to regenerate Britain's less prosperous communities by helping them take back control, webpage, Onward).

Exclusion isn't strictly about wealth, it's about money.  Prince George's and Montgomery Counties have a number of "community swim clubs" that are very grassroots, which many DC residents join.  But you pay to join--$500 for a family of four, less for seniors, an additional fee for caregiver access, temporary passes, and a deposit; Adelphi costs more).

For example, if you live in Mount Rainier, Maryland, one of the first things people say when they meet you is get on the waiting list for the PG Pool.  I know there are other community pools, like in Adelphi.

I thought one way that the Armed Forces Retirement Home in NW DC could build community support would be to provide some land for a similar kind of operation.

Most communities charge for recreation center access.  Montgomery County does have a no fee pass on an income basis, called RecAssist.  DC ended its fees for facilities after determining that the cost of collecting and processing payments wasn't worth it.   

Another equity question is when and how long the facilities are open.  For example, in DC when it can be hot into October, why is it that most pools are closed by the end of August?  If anything, with climate change, pools will need to be open more, not less.

Decades ago, Tacoma had a waterfront bus service called the Bayliner ("25 years later, is Tacoma ready for waterfront bus service?," Tacoma News-Tribune, 2017)

The Bloomberg article mentions that Long Beach has three pools, none of them easily accessible by transit.  (And Long Beach has a decent public transit system!)  

They can start by addressing that.  And making transit access a key condition in their capital improvements and master planning processes -- that all civic amenities should be easily accessible by transit.

"Explore Forest Park by public transportation" (Portland), Forest Park Conservancy, discusses transit access to area parks in Portland. An NHK program on Sapporo showed how people could take transit to a campground in a public park, where you could rent the equipment for your campsite in advance.

Weekend Wheels to the Waterfront, Port of Everett WA special weekend bus transit service, Port of Everett, Washington

Some communities add special transit services for parks in the summer ("Take a hike! Metro summer bus service to Cascade trailheads," Greater Seattle on the cheap)

Again, DC could do a better job of this for National Park Service facilities ("A gap in planning across agencies: Prioritizing park access for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users compared to motor vehicle access," 2015).  For example, back in the day, Capital Transit ran a weekend bus service for East Potomac Park--no such service exists now.  (Washington Park in Portland has an intra-park shuttle.)

1946 Capital Transit Map.  The V1 bus was exclusively for weekend service to East Potomac Park.

The second and deeper question is that of systematic planning for amenities.  Regardless of equity questions, many communities don't do a very good job with this.  DC definitely doesn't.  

-- Parks and Recreation Master Planning, Complete Communities Toolkit, University of Delaware

In 2008, I argued that DC should plan for parks and recreational facilities at four scales: city-wide; quadrant (although DC divides the four quadrants into ten "areas" for planning purposes; districts (multiple-neighborhoods); and neighborhoods ("Prototyping and municipal capital improvement programs").

For example, you don't need an outdoor pool in every neighborhood, they need to be planned at the district scale.  Or a city like DC only needs one or two exposition centers for the entire city, the same with indoor tracks.  (Arlington's Thomas Jefferson Community Center has an indoor track building that doubles as a site for large events.)

The way to think about this is the "integrated public realm framework" by parks planner David Barth.

And it would be helpful to coordinate access to school-based facilities as well, like Baltimore County, Maryland's agreement between its Department of Recreation and Parks and the school system. (Salt Lake County sometimes combines senior centers, recreation centers, and libraries in one facility.)

It's not helped by the failure to have a DC public parks and recreation master plan for more than 20 years ("Five examples of the failure to do parks and public space master planning in DC").  By contrast, Maryland requires all counties to have such a plan, and a process for regular updates.  For example this is what Montgomery County's website says about pools: 

There are 26 Swimming Pools in Montgomery County, Maryland, serving a population of 1,039,198 people in an area of 493 square miles. There is 1 Swimming Pool per 39,969 people, and 1 Swimming Pool per 18 square miles. In Maryland, Montgomery County is ranked 7th of 24 counties in Swimming Pools per capita, and 2nd of 24 counties in Swimming Pools per square mile.

But there isn't a map showing distribution, and by income. And these are a mix of public and private facilities.

The places with requirements for regular parks master planning tend to have a system for allocating facilities in a fair manner across the city.

But even then, communities often have big holes in the parks and recreation planning process, which is one of the reasons that I argue community master plans for parks and recreation need to include a census of private facilities, like golf.

Photo by Mike Near.

WRT pool planning more generally, I've argued that a public art dimension can be incorporated too ("A design idea for public outdoor swimming pools").

While the pool pictured is private, why not do similar public art treatments at public pools?

And have spaces for parties and lounging like the "community pools"?