i tried the whole tennis, bball courts in the medien stip thing on my frist city. i had long 12 x 4 blocks of hd res on either side and there were 2 lots of 4 of those side by side. 8 blocks all up when i put the parks and recs in the population went through the roof. the only down fall was the traffic conjestion. i tried putting in mt but it just didnt seem to get used!!(although there was on subway with 8000 peeps and one train station with a mammoth 14000. all others were dead!! beats me??) b4 parks and rec pop was: 25-27k after parks and rec pop: 100k. unfortunatley i demolshed it bc of air pollution and traffic problems and it had never recovered. the pop struggles to get to 20 k but i think you should stick with the parks on the median strip idea!!