The profound disruptions of COVID-19 have created new challenges for our leaders, who need to make sure New York City remains a place people want to live and work. The next city administration has an opportunity to make visionary investments in additional parks that will enhance our economic recovery while making the city more livable and equitable for a growing population.
On economic recovery, let’s lean into the fact that tourists and commuters are increasingly attracted to green spaces for a post-work stroll, movie, concert or people-watching. That’s why destination parks like Hudson River Park, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the High Line, Prospect Park, Rockaway beaches and more are a key to the city’s recovery.
In recent years, the list of destination parks has grown through considerable outside investments: New York State opened Shirley Chisholm Park, and private donors have contributed Domino Park and Little Island. Now, in addition to continuing to renovate existing parks, it’s the city’s turn to create a great new park. There are a number of worthy projects that deserve consideration: the conversion of the clogged and crowded Brooklyn-Queens Expressway into a linear park; a network of greenways throughout the city, and waterfront sites that could become available if wastewater-treatment plants relocate to Rikers Island.
At the same time, for its residents, the city must address the limitations of the existing system by building new parks in those neighborhoods that lack park space due to historic inequities. Analysis by The Trust for Public Land shows that in neighborhoods that skew low income, residents have access to 21% less park space within a 10-minute walk than those in high-income areas. The imbalance is more striking along racial lines; residents in communities of color have walkable access to 33% less park space than people in mostly white areas.
It is perhaps no surprise that New York City’s park system lags behind other cities in terms of acres per person, park amenities, and the equitable distribution of open space. While the city placed near the top in The Trust for Public Land’s latest ParkScore index, an annual ranking of American cities for their parks, it nonetheless has fallen from the top 10, ranking 11th of the 100 most populous cities. Renovating existing parks is necessary but not enough.
First, let’s make sure everyone lives within a 10-minute walk of a park. There are 75,000 New Yorkers, spread across 70 neighborhoods, who do not enjoy such access. Many park-starved neighborhoods are in areas that have endured decades of air pollution, hazardous waste and other environmental injustices.
Second, New York parks need more amenities like playgrounds, recreational centers and bathrooms to catch up to other cities. One place to start is the successful schoolyards-to-playgrounds program, which converts asphalt public school properties to publicly accessible pocket parks and playgrounds. Renovating 100 additional schoolyards (on existing publicly owned land) would cost less than some investments made in a single Manhattan park.
Third, let’s add new park space, starting with those neighborhoods with the most crowded parks. Our study of 188 communities across the city reveals that 10 neighborhoods in South and East Brooklyn, eight in Central and Eastern Queens, five in the Bronx, and four in Manhattan have more than 5,000 residents per acre of parkland — more than 10 times the citywide average of 480 people per acre. This overcrowding is unjust and potentially unsafe in the COVID era. By identifying locations for new public parkland — such as underused open space on public-housing campuses or traffic triangles — we can provide more places for playing, exercising, socializing outside, and more spaces to absorb rain and provide shade. A prime example is the QueensWay, a vision for a 3.5-mile linear park on an abandoned elevated railway that runs through Central Queens that could provide a safe pedestrian and cycling route to schools, parks, and subways.
Dedicating just 1% of the city budget to parks would bring us closer to the more generous — and forward-thinking — funding levels of decades past. Parks spending made up 0.52% of city spending in 2000, down from 0.86% in the 1980s and 1.5% in the 1960s.
Now is the time for the next mayor to develop a bold blueprint for shovel-ready park projects. Such a plan would ensure not only that New York City remains an appealing place to raise a family and pursue a career. It would create construction jobs with federal funding, much as our predecessors did during the Great Depression.
Strickland is the vice president of the Mid-Atlantic Region and New York State director for The Trust for Public Land.
