Produced through a four-year collaboration between the Design Trust and the NYC Parks Department, High Performance Landscape Guidelines: 21st Century Parks for NYC is a blueprint for sustainable design, construction, and maintenance for NYC's 29,000 acres of parkland. 

impact

Part how-to manual and part advocacy tool, High Performance Landscape Guidelines reflects a paradigm shift in thinking about the park system as vital green infrastructure. This 270-page document guides future activity in all 29,000 acres of New York City open space, as the Parks Department has adopted best practices in construction, maintenance, material selection and resource management as its new agency standards.

The third in our trilogy of sustainable design manuals, High Performance Landscape Guidelines has been widely embraced by the local design community, earning accolades from the New York Chapter of American Society of Landscape Architects, and drawing a record crowd of over 400 people to the launch party at the Center for Architecture.

background

Often thought of as the ultimate urban environment, New York City is actually the greenest city in the country. Over 15% of the city is parkland, managed by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (Parks). Healthy parks and landscapes provide a range of ecological benefits and can play a critical role in mitigating and adapting to climate change. 

With New York City's population projected to top 9.1 million in the next 20 years, the Department of Parks and Recreation is undertaking its greatest period of park building since the 1930s, equipping our green space and streetscapes to accommodate 1 million new residents. Building on the Design Trust's previous high performance guidelines, the NYC Parks Department proposed a third set of guidelines focused on promoting sustainable practices for the design, construction, and maintenance of their next generation of parks.

process

Five Design Trust Fellows collaborated on the research and development of practical strategies and best management practices to create the Guidelines. Throughout the project, the team received invaluable contributions from dozens of Parks employees from every division and feedback from more than 40 city, state, and federal agencies and private-sector professionals who generously offered their comments as peer reviewers. 

From planted traffic islands to urban forests, High Performance Landscape Guidelines promotes cleaner air and water, increased biodiversity, lowered heat island effect, reduced energy usage and, of course, expanded opportunities for relaxation, recreation and environmental education for all New Yorkers.