A new standard requiring at least small parks to be built within a quarter-mile of every Lawrence residence is one of those ideas that sounds good but just isn’t practical.

The current standard in Lawrence is to have a park within a half-mile of every residence, but a majority of the Lawrence City Commission decided Tuesday night that wasn’t good enough. Most people wouldn’t walk a half-mile to a park, they reasoned, so we need to build enough parks so people will only have to walk a quarter-mile to access one.

The new standard – which was approved against the recommendation of the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission and the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department – won’t apply to existing neighborhoods, but will be a requirement for all new development in the city.

More parks sounds like a wonderful idea, but an arbitrary quarter-mile limit isn’t the best strategy for the city.

First, in surveys conducted for Parks and Rec, local residents give top priority not to new parks but to walking and biking trails that connect schools, parks and neighborhoods. Biking and walking apparently is as much a part of the recreation as whatever facilities are available at a park. Even walking at a relatively leisurely pace, it takes 10 or 15 minutes to get to a park that’s a half-mile away.

The cost of cutting that distance in half would divert money that is needed both to maintain existing Parks and Rec facilities and for other city needs.

Purchasing that much park land would not be an insignificant investment, but it seems likely that the commissioners who favor the quarter-mile standard will seek to require developers of new neighborhoods to donate land as part of their development plans. That would fit with the commissioners’ favorable attitude toward various “impact fees,” which may be imposed to help cover the costs of expanding streets, sewers, water lines and other city services to new developments.

Donation is one way to acquire the land, but it would be foolish to think developers will pay impact fees and donate park land without passing a large portion of those costs along to the people who are buying homes in the new area. That will increase housing costs and aggravate another problem that commissioners often decry: the lack of affordable housing in Lawrence.

Even if the land is donated, the Parks and Rec Department estimates that increasing the density of parks in Lawrence will add about $990,000 a year to the cost of operating and maintaining the city’s parks. Where will that money come from? Given the many infrastructure needs now facing the city – street rebuilding, a new sewer treatment plant and other projects – now doesn’t seem like the time to initiate a huge expansion in the parks maintenance budget.

Parks are great, but, like everything the city does, they come at a cost. At this time, city dollars will be better spent on maintaining existing parks and making reasonable expansions in the city’s park system. Parks within a half-mile, along with greenbelts and trails that connect parks, schools and neighborhoods, are a reasonable strategy that doesn’t need to be changed.