POWER, PROMISE, POTENTIAL, AND POSIBILITIES OF PARKS, RECREATION, AND LEISURE

Parks, Recreation, and Leisure: Everywhere, Everyone, All the Time

• Leisure takes place in cities and towns, small villages, the countryside, and mega urban centers.
• Leisure experiences occur both inside buildings and outdoors or sometimes both.
• Leisure can be found in all the places and spaces in which people gather to play, enjoy, and
relax.

It’s for everyone!

• Leisure touches the lives of everyone: all ages, life stages, cultures, social classes, and genders.

Benefits Derived

• Adequate clean air and water to sustain life

• Opportunities to live purposeful and pleasurable lives

• Memories of happy times with friends and family

• Options and opportunities for health and well-being over the life span

Unique Qualities of Parks and Recreation

• People are empowered to voluntarily choose how they will use their own unobligated time.

• Fun is fundamental to attracting people to activities and options that are intrinsically valuable to
individuals, friends, families, neighborhoods, communities, and society.

Parks and Recreation as a Professional Career Choice

Varieties of career opportunities is associated with an essential aspect of human behavior and
major component of the economy that created opportunities for the following:

• Personal growth
• Empowerment
• Sense of purpose
• Resourcefulness on the part of the professionals in that field

Values and Benefits of Parks, Recreation, and Leisure

General category---3 types of benefits

• Improved condition

• Prevention of a worse condition

• Realization of a psychological experience

(Bev Driver, 1998)

Benefits Described

• Improved condition. In the case that a human, natural, or economic factor is not functioning
at full capacity or is functioning in a deleterious manner, the benefit of recreation is to
ameliorate this condition.
• Prevention of a worse condition. Not every instance of poor performance or threatening
conditions can be improved. The value of parks and recreation is to stem further erosion or
deterioration of a human, natural, or economic condition.
• Realization of a psychological experience.
• Leisure pursuits that people select for the intrinsic values afforded through the experience.
Benefits such as stress reduction, sense of control, and spirituality are examples.