Most San Diegans know about Balboa Park, Mission Bay and other big parks in the city, but a new website lets users search for lesser-known parks near home, work, or any other address in the county.
The website called Get Outside San Diego is funded by The San Diego Foundation and created by GreenInfo Network, a nonprofit that specializes in mapping technology.
"Access to the outdoors and green and open spaces is really important to people in our region," said Katie Rast, the director of community impact at The San Diego Foundation. "This is one of the ways we want to address that need."
The website is part of the foundation's Opening the Outdoors Program, which is meant to increase access to nature.
On the website, users can type in an address and see nearby parks. The site then lists amenities at each park, including playgrounds, ball fields, dog parks and hiking trails.
The website also divides parks by 20 different recreational activities, so users can also search for parks that have a specific thing they need. For example, a playground or swimming pool. The site also has maps of parks available for download and lists a few "adventures" — planned hikes or outings users can follow.
For example, the site's "City Heights Canyon Loop Trail" adventure shows access points for several canyon trails in City Heights.
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Rast said the site will feature more adventures in the future. She also hopes community members will give input on what they'd like the website to include.
"This really is all about helping people access the beautiful spaces around them," she said. "In San Diego we are so lucky to live in a place where we have mountains and seashores and so many places we can connect with, but we have a fairly complex system of open spaces and we may not even know what's around us. The purpose of this site is to connect us to those places."
