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Ready 2 Play Parks and Recreation Master Plan

Published by Department of Parks and Recreation | District of Columbia | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2024-07-09T00:00:00.000Z
The value of parks and recreational facilities as vital social infrastructure for cities has never been higher. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw recreation centers become testing sites, vaccination sites, and meal delivery hubs. We also saw record-numbers of residents flock to the outdoors and use parks and other public spaces for exercise, social gathering, protest, and quiet contemplation. The pandemic has highlighted how integral parks and recreational facilities are to the quality of life, physical and mental health, civic assembly, resilience, and fabric of communities. It has also laid bare our country’s stained history of systemic racism and the continuing inequity in access to and quality of parks and recreational amenities in different neighborhoods.Ready2Play is an ambitious, people-centered proposal for the District of Columbia (DC) parks and recreation system that charts a bold path forward for planning, design, programming, and operations over the next 20 years. It is focused on addressing existing inequities in the park system through future investment and operations and in meeting the needs of residents in every neighborhood now and into the future.This plan will guide DC Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) planning, programming, operations, and investments in the years to come. It will be a roadmap forward for how to maintain, enhance and grow the parks system in DC and a living document, updated at regular intervals, that will track and report on metrics to measure progress toward its goals.The plan provides goals, strategies and actions as well as site-based investment recommendations that DPR intends to pursue over the course of the next two decades.  New tools and frameworks are also presented within these pages to help guide future decision-making through data.Feedback from DC residents informed the strategies and investment priorities depicted in this plan and will continue to inform future iterations of this plan in the years ahead. Residents can continue to engage with DPR through the implementation of this plan and follow progress at the plan’s webpage, www.ready2playdc.com. 

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