The City of Somerville's Key Systems Indicators
Somerville has 39 parks, 10 community gardens, and 3 dog parks. Use this map to find one in your neighborhood!
Somerville Park Map
There were over 3,600 registrations for Somerville recreation programs in 2015. Check out SomervilleRec to find a program for you or someone in your family.
The Somerville Recreation Dept. issues permits for the use of nine City fields, as well as the DCR-owned Dilboy Field. The fields can be reserved for a variety of social and athletic events, and more information can be found here. The majority of field time (61.4%) is reserved by Somerville youth leagues and organizations.
While analyzing data from the 2013 happiness survey, SomerStat discovered that one of the single best predictors of whether someone plans to move away from Somerville is how highly he or she rates the city's social community events. For this and many other reasons, the City has encouraged and supported events that bring neighbors together - a fact which can be seen in the explosion of temporary food licenses over the past few years.
The City currently administers 110 alcohol licenses, plus three farmers series pouring permits. More than 50% of these licenses are privately-owned and therefore transferrable. Of the 110 alcohol licenses, 90% are issued to restaurants and over half were issued in the last ten years. Alcohol licenses are critical to the success of Somerville restaurants and the development of Somerville as a regional dining destination. The City has been focused on increasing the allowable number of licenses in recent years as new development and restaurants are created in Assembly and Union Square.