How can L.A. create better places to play?

What do Los Angeles residents really want in their parks?

To take the public pulse, the Department of Recreation and Parks is launching the first citywide study in eight years to gauge how people view their 15,700 acres of park space.

The $350,000 study comes 18 months after City Controller Laura Chick faulted the department for being out of touch with park users' wishes.

In her audit, Chick concluded that "lower income neighborhoods, including those predominantly populated by Latinos, African American and Asian/Pacific Islander communities, have dramatically less access to park resources than more affluent areas."

She urged the department to conduct a study of residents' needs every five years and to use that information to identify and offset "real and perceived inequities" in park services.

"We cannot and should not be running any city department, much less one that is so essential to our residents' quality of life, by groping in the dark," Chick wrote.

The study is slated to be finished early next year and will help determine the future of the department's crown jewel, the 4,200-acre Griffith Park, as well as the city's nearly 400 smaller parks, 372 children's play areas, 306 sports fields and other facilities.

It comes at a key time for the city parks department, which has long struggled with a lack of parkland and is now confronted with the temporary loss of nearly 25% of Griffith Park in a May 8 wildfire.

Park planners are gearing up for a $50-million restoration of the park amid lobbying from hikers, equestrians and other users with sometimes conflicting views of the park's character. The massive park northwest of downtown accounts for more than a quarter of Los Angeles parkland.

Simultaneously, some groups are calling on the department to provide poor neighborhoods -- particularly the children -- with better transportation to Griffith Park, as well as to create more park space elsewhere.

Environmental groups and public health experts see adding parkland as a way to promote exercise for children and combat obesity.

"There's a silent health epidemic occurring in our children," said Reed Holderman, vice president and regional director of the Trust for Public Land, a national group that assists communities in purchasing parkland. It has found that only 33% of Los Angeles schoolchildren live within a quarter mile of a park, compared with 97% in Boston and 91% in New York City.