A small park on Kempthorne Crescent in Kohimarama, Auckland, Selwyn Forest & Bird holds a 5.0 Google rating from the people who use it.
A good suburban park earns its keep in small ways: safe edges, enough tree cover for summer shade, and room for the everyday traffic of dogs, scooters and prams. Around Auckland's eastern bays it pays to check the council signage for dog rules, which vary from park to park and tighten in summer near the coast. Birdlife is a fair measure of a park's health — tūī and fantails follow good native planting — and regulars tend to know the quiet hours too, usually early morning and after the school run.
On a leafy Kohimarama street, this is clearly a green corner the neighbourhood values — the rating says as much.