For the fifth time in five years, Portland's park system has made it into the top 10 of a national list.

The Rose City ranks 6th nationally this year, according to an annual analysis by the Trust for Public Land. Before that, we were 5th, 3rd, 7th and 6th.

Called "ParkScore," the rating system measures whether cities are "meeting the need for parks." It tracks access, acreage, spending and amenities, among other things.

Since launching the list in 2012, there's been little movement among Portland's park peers, with San Francisco, Minneapolis*, New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., all ranking in the top ten since scoring began.

Portland -- which earned 4.5 "park benches" on a five-bench scale -- ranks well for a couple of reasons.

First, the annual report tracks parkland as a percent of the city's acreage, and Portland does extremely well, scoring 19 out of 20 points.

That's largely because of Forest Park. The 5,172 acre forest represents about 44 percent of Portland's park acreage.

Separately, Portland also does pretty well on per capita parks spending and easy access to parks -- rankings that don't change much year to year.

A new metric, added for 2016, also helps Portland's standing: Dog parks.

We've got 5.4 dog parks (fenced and unfenced) per 100,000 residents, which is tied for tops among the 100 most populous cities.

Such a prestigious stat wins you a "Golden Bone" award, of course.

But here's we aren't so great: per capita playgrounds, per capita community centers and average park size. Portland received fewer than half of all available points in those categories.

Even so, don't be surprised if the 2017 awards come out again next year and Portland finishes in the top 10. You heard it here first.

* Minneapolis debuted in 2013 and has been No. 1 ever since.

-- Brad Schmidt

503-294-7628

@cityhallwatch