BY ROSE ADAMS
East Flatbush and its surrounding
nabes have less park
area than any other district in
the city, with only 1 percent of
the area’s 2,000 acres dedicated
to recreational green space, according
to a recent report.
Community District 17 — encompassing
East and Northeast
Flatbush, Remsen Village, and
Ditmas Village — contains only
15 acres worth of city parks,
which is equivalent to approximately
seven soccer fi elds, according
to the 2021 Open Spaces
Profi les report published by the
advocacy organization, New
Yorkers for Parks.
The district, which stretches
across 3.3 square miles, also
houses fewer recreational amenities
than most other districts,
with only one community garden
and eight playgrounds, compared
to the nine community
gardens and 16 playgrounds located
on average in each of the
city’s 59 community districts.
The East Flatbush neighborhood
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isn’t the only area with
lackluster parkland in Brooklyn,
where public green space
tends to be less clean and in
worse condition than the city’s
average, the report said. Inadequate
park space, in addition to
lowering the quality of life, can
negatively impact the health of
residents, research has found.
Many of the disparities in
park access fall along racial
and socio-economic lines, the
2021 Open Spaces Profi les report
revealed.
While East New York is 89
percent Black and has a median
household income below
the city’s, the wealthier Community
District 2 encompassing
Brooklyn Heights and Fort
Greene houses 100 acres of
city parkland and more playgrounds,
dog runs, and community
gardens than average.
Other well-off areas, such as
Park Slope and Carroll Gardens,
also have more recreational
community gathering
spaces than the city’s average,
Brooklynites enjoy Prospect Park’s Long Meadow. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
according to the report.
However, race and wealth
don’t always determine a neighborhood’s
park access. Borough
Park, which is 70 percent white
and working class, has only 32
acres of parks — ranking it 56
out of the city’s 59 districts in
terms of available green space.
Meanwhile, the majority-Black
and Latino district that covers
East New York and Starrett
City, which has one of the lowest
median household incomes
of the borough, is made up of
23 percent parkland because
of the Shirley Chisholm State
Park to its south and a proliferation
of community gardens.
To revitalize the city’s
parkland, New Yorkers for
Parks unveiled a fi ve-point
plan that calls on the city to
dedicate one percent of the
city’s budget each year toward
park maintenance and operations,
build more greenspace
in underserved communities,
reform and streamline the
process through which parks
get renovated, and work with
non-profi ts and volunteers to
increase access to each park,
among other demands.
Those efforts would mark
the fi rst step in increasing the
Brooklynites’ connection to
parkland — a particularly important
utility as many indoor
spaces remain off-limits amid
the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We need a new vision for a
new era of parks in our city,”
said Adam Ganser, the executive
director of New Yorkers
for Parks. “Now is the time to
prioritize these open spaces
as the essential infrastructure
they are not only for our
quality of life and environmental
resilience, but as drivers
of New York’s economic
recovery. Every New Yorker
deserves access to quality
parks and green space, but
we have a long way to go to
achieve that goal.”
East Flatbush has less
parkland than any
other nabe: report
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