New York City has got one of the most extensive neighborhood park systems in the nation. With more than 5,000 individual properties comprising some 29,000 acres of land, the parks and playgrounds and community gardens under the domain of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation add up to a significant share of the city’s space.
Yet the agency believes that those parks could still be better interwoven with the city’s urban fabric.
That’s why NYC Parks just launched Parks Without Borders, a new program focusing on the corners, borders, and other underused spaces within (and around) New York parks. “When you see the New York park edges, you’ll see why people are pushing for this change,” says Parks and Recreation Commissioner Mitchell Silver.
Using design and landscaping strategies—and by subtracting as much as they’re adding—park designers mean to edit and revise a number of parks to better meet their neighborhoods.