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A Community Program Is Transforming New York Schoolyards into Climate-Resilient Spaces

The New York City Playground Program/Green Community Schoolyards is featured in this article by World Resources Institute. We are thrilled to see our client, Mary Alice Lee talk about the importance of mitigating urban heat island effect and how our new green schoolyards are impacting both the environment and the communities they serve in incredibly positive ways.

September 3, 2024 By Jen Shin and Anna Kustar Cover Image by: WRI

 

In Brooklyn, one of New York City’s five boroughs, a new schoolyard features newly-planted native trees offering shade and bright playground equipment that sits adjacent to a track and turf field. Colorful murals celebrating the diversity of its Boreum Hill neighborhood surround the area. Seniors play chess while toddlers run past. It could easily be mistaken for a public park if it weren't for the school signage on the building next door.


The Pacific School (P.S. 38K) is one of more than 220 New York City public schools to transform its asphalt playground into a vibrant community space over the past two decades thanks to Trust for Public Land’s (TPL’s) Green Community Schoolyards. The program aims to create safe, accessible green places for New Yorkers — particularly those in disadvantaged neighborhoods — to gather close to their homes and connect with nature.


"I grew up in New York City, and I played on an asphalt playground,” recalls Mary Alice Lee, director at TPL. “It was adjacent to a park, and I would stare through the chain-link fence thinking it's not fair that we don't get to enjoy the playground equipment, the trees, the shade.”

The Trust for Public Land's Green Community Schoolyards program transforms public school spaces, like this playground at the Pacific School (P.S. 38K), for both students and the community to enjoy. Photo by WRI.


Lee has since dedicated her decades-long career to creating open spaces for New York City’s residents to enjoy the outdoors. “I think every child deserves a place to play in,” she says.

But TPL’s program offers much more than recreational and community-building opportunities. In an urban landscape otherwise dominated by concrete, green schoolyards are also critical climate-resilient spaces to help mitigate the increasingly extreme heat and flooding impacting New York City.


Green Community Schoolyards Address New York City’s Climate Needs

Nicknamed the “concrete jungle” in the mid-1900s, New York City’s dense urban landscapes of skyscrapers, concrete pavements and bustling streets are legendary. But with temperatures rising and the urban heat island effect exacerbating extreme heat in cities, New York faces a growing need for cool, shaded green spaces where all members of a neighborhood can spend recreational time, meet neighbors and form community connections.

New York City is home to only 2.2 public playgrounds per 10,000 residents, far below the average of 3.1 playgrounds in America’s 100 largest cities. The hundreds of green community schoolyards TPL has created seek to address that shortage. The program has succeeded in making playgrounds accessible to more than half of all New Yorkers, with 5 million residents now living within a 10-minute walk to a green space. TPL estimates that 220,000 children and community members have directly benefited from these new schoolyards.


Read the entire article HERE

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