New York thrives because of its crowded chaos. It’s where brilliant things emerge from people bumping into one another amid a thicket of skyscrapers, a tangle of subway lines, clogged sidewalks and a medley of neighborhoods as distinct as countries.
The urban maze that gradually replaced the landscape’s oaks, wetlands and dogwoods allowed humanity to flourish.
But when you jam 8.5 million people into a few hundred square miles surrounded by water, space quickly becomes scarce. It sets up a tug of war over the open areas that are left — the parks, the tree-lined river banks, the weedy, unused lots.
The people who live here have always wanted, and perhaps needed, a counter to the chaos.
At no time has this dynamic been more important than today, when New York faces its worst housing shortage in nearly 60 years. The city needs more homes and places to put them. But what does that mean for the city’s remaining open spaces?
How New Yorkers view and use these green spaces may have profound implications for the city’s future.
A source of tension
A plot belonging to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Queens doesn’t look like much: less than a quarter-acre of dirt, some trees and a few toys scattered about. But on a recent weeknight, more than 100 people gathered at a nearby public school to hear whether the lot, which doubles as a playground, would be sold to a developer.
“The problem is, if you build on a piece of land, the idea of it, or the reality of it ever becoming park space again, is essentially zero,” Donovan Finn, an urban planner, told the crowd of his neighbors from the area, Jackson Heights.
The church wants to sell the land quickly, and many neighbors want the Parks Department to buy it so it can stay a playground. Locals say that Jackson Heights has so little park space that even an unremarkable plot feels precious.
The same feeling of desperation has long animated debates across the city over preserving green space or meeting other city needs and desires.
On one hand, there was Seneca Village, a settlement of Black property owners that was cleared in the 1850s to build Central Park, one of the largest and most popular urban parks in the world. During New York Fashion Week last month, the designer Natalie Belle used the site as a backdrop for a show featuring Black models to honor the village.
In 2015, the housing department drew fire over plans to build small apartment buildings on publicly owned lots. In Lower Manhattan, a conflict over whether to replace the Elizabeth Street Garden with housing dragged on for years until the city all but gave up a few months ago.
In Brooklyn, the mere thought of shadows falling onto the Brooklyn Botanic Garden or buildings blocking views from Green-Wood Cemetery has prompted uproar.
Robert Moses, the city’s infamous urban planner, said almost a century ago that it’s hard to persuade people to make room for parks when they are surrounded by trees. “It is only when their homes are hemmed in by other houses that they begin to feel the necessity for a breathing space of green,” he said.
A backyard
Public green space is often the only backyard New Yorkers have.
They throw barbecues and quinceañeras in Prospect Park. They do yoga on the manicured grass at Bryant Park under the skyscrapers in Midtown Manhattan. They can’t grow herbs or tomatoes in their own yards, so they turn to shared gardens.
The Cedar Tree Garden sits alongside Brooklyn brownstones in Bedford-Stuyvesant. A fig tree stands like a sentinel near the gated entrance. Tomato vines climb along tilting trellises, and red and green callaloo and oregano plants sprout from the ground.
The place used to be overgrown and unused. Then Cecil Prince, who immigrated to Brooklyn with his family, moved in next door. In 1975, he began cleaning and tending to the garden, leaning on his experience on a farm in Guyana as a child. He gave produce away for free.
“I said, I’m going to take the country and put it in the city,” he said.
There are more than 550 community gardens across the city, part of a bigger network of modified open spaces where New Yorkers mingle and break from busy lives.
These spaces “can be really restorative and give a lot of stress-reducing effects because of the contact with nature,” said Stephanie Orstad, a New York University medical school professor who studies the effects of green space. “If you live in an urban area like New York City, having a good quality green space near you can have all of these multiple health benefits.”
In the heart of Manhattan’s financial district, tourists and bankers compete for space on the sidewalks. Climb the steps on one section of Water Street, though, and the office buildings open into a park called the Elevated Acre.
Workers lie in the sun or quietly eat lunch there with headphones plugged into their ears, tuning out the taxis and trucks rumbling along the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.
A counter to climate change
The 23 acres of Hunter’s Point South Park in Long Island City, Queens, once hosted manufacturing plants and factories. Now the park has carbon-capturing grasses. A newly restored salt marsh area, raised earthen mounds and a 600-gallon reservoir hidden under artificial turf help prevent the East River from flooding nearby developments.
Jonathan Perez, 43, and his daughter Julie, 4, played on the grass as sunset approached.
The two come to the park every day. Mr. Perez pointed to places they had found a praying mantis and a monarch butterfly caterpillar, the kind of experiences he hoped would instill in Julie his love of nature.
“You can really explore here,” he said.
New York City’s history is rife with examples of how humans have damaged the environment. At the same time, the city has also become a striking illustration of the dangers of a warming planet, with Hurricane Sandy killing dozens and laying waste to buildings and neighborhoods in 2012.
Today, green spaces increasingly serve dual roles as recreational areas and barriers against climate change. Bioswales — little plant-covered channels that divert storm water — line medians and sidewalks across the city. Rooftop plants absorb storm water. Ponds help keep rainwater from overwhelming streets.
But these types of projects are expensive, said Jessica Sechrist, the executive director of the Hunters Point Parks Conservancy. Last year, her group had to remove 2,000 bags full of weeds, and there was a small fire.
She said there are so many people visiting parks now, and so many dogs, that the need for maintenance at this and other parks far exceeds the city’s budget for it.
“This is a fantastic park,” she said. “But it’s kind of at capacity.”
A (mostly) free space for entertainment
Having fun in New York City can be extremely expensive. Green spaces often make it free.
Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan has outdoor movies and yoga. The Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Queens showcases the region’s wild creatures, from migrating birds to terrapin turtles.
More than a dozen golf courses across the city let people play for between $25 and $70. The Parks Department has reservations for places to play soccer, Frisbee, cricket, football, baseball, volleyball and more.
Moore Jackson Community Garden in Woodside, Queens, used to be a cemetery for a family of British loyalists, said Elizabeth O’Connor, who lives across the street. The gravestones, once buried, are now propped up in the back, while most of the garden’s 20,000 square feet is open space and dotted with plants like rainbow Swiss chard and collard greens.
“I was in here watering in the morning and there was a pregnant woman using the benches to stretch and another woman doing her workout, a guy on his laptop drinking his coffee,” Ms. O’Connor said.
But the garden’s signature events are plays and other performances. One year, a group of interns built a puppet theater. There are regular concerts and an annual theater festival, with plays tied to garden themes. On a recent Saturday, actors staged plays written by children in the neighborhood.
Farther north, in the Bronx, people can hop into canoes and kayaks at the Bronx River Alliance’s headquarters in Starlight Park. For many years, the Bronx River had been dirty and polluted. But with tours and days for “community paddling,” the alliance hopes it can get people invested in what the river has to offer.
Hundreds of menhaden fish, little slivers of silver, swim in synchronized patterns just under the water. Kingfishers screech above as they fly from tree to tree.
“It’s just like connecting to nature and the Bronx River in a way that isn’t normal for New York City,” said Daniel Ranells, the alliance’s director of programs and operations, as he steered a canoe up the river.
A place of reinvention
Many green spaces were once other things.
The High Line in Manhattan was, as the name implies, a rail line. Wave Hill, a public garden in the Bronx, was an estate. Freshkills Park on Staten Island, the largest park to be developed in New York City in decades, was a landfill.
And at Concrete Plant Park, a few minutes away from Starlight Park in the Bronx, massive orange barrels stand vertically — the remnants of the park’s namesake. People lounge on chairs, or on blankets under trees, as children run on the patches of grass. A bridge carries subway trains overhead.
A small sign poking out of a thicket of plants reads “Bronx River Foodway,” directing visitors to a tanbark-covered path where they can pick herbs and vegetables. Otherwise, foraging is not allowed in the city.
The different uses over time reflect how green spaces can evolve, though it is not always easy.
“Not everybody likes everything the same way,” said Timon McPhearson, a professor of urban ecology at the New School. “We’re a very diverse place in New York City.”
Produced by Eve Edelheit and Shauntel Lowe. Additional development by Jeff Sisson.
Mihir Zaveri covers housing in the New York City region for The Times.
The post New York City Is Full of Green Space. You Just Have to Find It. appeared first on New York Times.
