At Penn, green space accounts for roughly 100 of the campus’ 300 acres. Parks play an important role for the Penn community and nearby residents by keeping them comfortable, healthy, and focused by providing a refuge from heat, pollution, and noise. They also provide essential infrastructural needs such as water catchment and filtration, oxygen generation, carbon sequestration, absorption of pollutants, the building and improvement of soil, reduction of energy use, and more. In a city, these parks and green spaces play an even more crucial role. Well beyond the dollar value that can be assigned to ecosystem benefits, there is untold value in the meaning and memories urban parks provide to countless students and alumni whose life at Penn would never be the same without them.
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