Judy Huynh

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NYC Parks as Climate Infrastructure

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Which New York City parks flood today and which will by 2100, and the case for funding them like roads and bridges

My roleLed it: the original analysis, the map, the report, and the launch with the team

WhenFall 2024 to launch on 22 April 2025

WithRebuild by Design team, with launch statements from New Yorkers for Parks and South Bronx Unite

Scale2,385 parks from Trust for Public Land’s list, checked against flood zones: 38% in flood zones today, nearly 70% by 2100

NowMap and report live on rebuildbydesign.org

01

The question

Which of New York’s parks are in flood zones today, and which will be in the future? Parks cover 14% of the city’s land and get less than 1% of its budget. They can also soak up rain and cool the streets around them. My job was to show, for each park, where the city should invest first, and to make the case for funding parks like roads and bridges.

Parks are in every neighborhood. That is why I thought they could hold rain close to where it falls, until the sewers catch up.

02

The hard part

The first problem was deciding what counts as a park. The city’s parks list had 4,096 properties when I pulled it in October 2024. Trust for Public Land’s ParkServe counts 2,385 parks. I moved to ParkServe in November and checked every one of them against the flood maps again.

Then there were numbers that look impressive and are wrong. ParkServe lists how many people live within a 10 minute walk of each park. Add those up across the flood-prone parks and you get 43.8 million people, in a city of 8.8 million, because one New Yorker lives near many parks. Acres go wrong too: Gateway National Recreation Area alone is about 39% of all the parkland in the city, so adding up acres says 98.6% of parkland is at risk.

03

How I ran it

I settled which parks to count, and how, before I started the map and the report.

  1. October 2024Test the ideaRan a first pass on the city’s parks list, along with schools, libraries and faith-based organizations near flood zones, to see where the story was.
  2. November to December 2024Settle the data and the rulesMoved to ParkServe’s 2,385 parks, added heat and social vulnerability, and set the rule for the 177 high priority parks. The first findings deck went to partners on 10 December 2024.
  3. January to March 2025Map and reportPut a first map up for review on 10 January, then revised it through rounds of team feedback, adding address search and a phone layout. Drafted the report with the team in review rounds through March.
  4. 22 April 2025LaunchThe report launched, Parks Save Cities, Parks Save Lives, with a fact sheet, the high priority parks list and a self-guided Hoboken walking guide. I finished the website layout and the high priority parks language. The team ran press, the newsletter and social media.
  5. May 2025 onTake it to neighborhoodsRebuild took it to Rainproof NYC in May, and to South Bronx Unite and Queens Community Board 2 in June.
The NYC Parks as Climate Infrastructure fact sheet
The one page fact sheet

I matched parks on their ID numbers, since many share a name and three unrelated parks have “Gateway” in theirs.

04

What I built

An interactive map of the parks in the analysis. Search your address to see if your park is on it, turn the flood, heat vulnerability and social vulnerability layers on and off, and find the high priority parks. The flood layers cover heavy rain (mapped to the 2080s) and coastal storm surge (mapped to 2100). Alongside it, a short visual report, a one page fact sheet and a downloadable list of the 177 high priority parks.

Explore the NYC Parks interactive map →
Download the high priority parks list →
Read the fact sheet →

Mapbox GL JS · QGIS · ArcGIS · GeoJSON · Python/R · Visual Studio Code · Data Wrangling · Project Management · UX/UI Design

I counted parks instead of acres, because Gateway National Recreation Area alone is bigger than the next nine largest parks combined.

I ranked high priority parks on heat and social vulnerability as well as flooding, because communities prepare for and recover from disasters unequally.

05

What it found

  • Nearly 70% of NYC parks will be in flood zones by 2100, up from 38% today.
  • Over 40% of flood-prone parks are in neighborhoods with high social vulnerability, and about a third are also in the areas at highest risk from heat.
  • Of the city’s 177 highest priority parks for upgrades, nearly 60% are in the Bronx.
  • Across the Hudson, Hoboken’s parks built after Hurricane Sandy have cut flooding by 88%, and can hold 4.2 million gallons of rain in a single storm.
The parks map with the social vulnerability layer turned on
The map with social vulnerability turned on

06

Where it went next

  • 22 April 2025: launched with statements from New Yorkers for Parks, the chair of the City Council’s Parks Committee, South Bronx Unite and Central and South East Brooklyn CDC.
  • Led a walking tour of Hoboken’s parks built to hold floodwater for park advocates and organizations.
  • In the press, April 2025: NY1, A new solution to street flooding? Hoboken could be the model, and Fast Company (28 April), Hoboken’s parks were redesigned to stop floods. Could New York City’s be next?
  • September 2025: Rebuild ran Climate Week walking tours of East River Park and Hoboken’s parks.
  • April 2026: Rebuild’s director referenced the parks analysis in The City Reporter’s coverage of a new study on flood risk in New York.

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