[close]
We partnered with the Public Housing Community Fund in 2022 on Green Space Connections to scale our participatory design work with New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents in the Lower East Side, citywide. After completing four resident-led green space transformations in Brooklyn and the Bronx, The Fund is bringing the program to four more NYCHA campuses over the next three years.
If NYCHA was its own city, it would be the 37th largest in the United States. That’s more people than Atlanta or Miami. One out of every 16 New Yorkers live in NYCHA, the biggest public housing authority in the nation.
Public housing is integral to communities across the five boroughs, yet the design of NYCHA’s classic “towers in the park” neighborhoods tell a different story. Despite the positive impact on reducing housing insecurity and improving health and economic stability outcomes, NYCHA and public housing agencies across North America face enormous pressures from federal underfunding, disinvestment, and maintenance backlogs, often leaving communal spaces and community areas at these sites an afterthought.
As of last year, nearly 80% of “open spaces” or the outdoor areas surrounding NYCHA’s 335 public housing sites are underutilized, often fenced-off, limiting residents’ free use and isolating the sites from their neighborhoods. For all New Yorkers, access to nearby, safe, and maintained green spaces is a critical indicator for long-term health and well-being, and a defense against climate vulnerability as our summers continue to get hotter. Across the country, the park equity gap reduces the wellness benefits of close-to-home outdoor gathering opportunities for over 100 million residents.
Nearly a decade back with these same issues in mind, the Design Trust identified one such sequestered NYCHA site in the Lower East Side and created Opening the Edge, proposed by artist Jane Greengold in 2014 to our open call for public space project ideas. The solution was (seemingly) simple, upgrade the Lillian Wald Houses’ green space by removing the fence around an inaccessible grassy plot and work with residents to design the kind of community space that they wanted and would use. More on how that vision took ten years to become what residents today call “The People’s Park” here and featured in the Architect’s Newspaper.
This work inspired NYCHA to center participatory design in site planning and advance the Open Space Masterplan and the Connected Communities framework, re-imagining what outdoor spaces across developments can and should be by integrating community needs with necessary environmental upgrades, and encouraging public-private partnerships that make enhancements more feasible and improve quality of life in public housing. As NYCHA stewards over 2,400 acres of land (three Central Parks), intentional urban design better connects residents not only to each other, but to surrounding neighborhoods and their resources.
With a $3.2 million grant from Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Public Housing Community Fund inaugurated “Green Space Connections.” Led by The Fund, in collaboration with NYCHA’s Asset & Capital Management Division, and managed by the Design Trust, the program set out to use the Connected Communities' participatory design process to create and activate green space at four NYCHA public housing developments. Community outreach and programming was supported by the Center for Justice Innovation’s (CJI) Neighborhood Safety Initiatives. The four sites – Marlboro Houses and Roosevelt Houses in Brooklyn and Castle Hill Houses and Patterson Houses in the Bronx – were chosen due to their documented high need in health indicators, as well as high-risk for climate change impacts, leveraging green space as a critical environmental and social justice tool.
Over the past four years, Green Space Connections has empowered existing tenant association leadership and fostered resident networks to imagine new green spaces at their doorsteps. Through outreach events, design workshops, and new relationships with architects, urban planners, and nonprofits, community input was gathered and metamorphosed into what communal assets they needed most, spanning playgrounds, fitness areas, dog parks, and more.
“Green Space Connections has really amplified lessons learned from our Opening the Edge work,” said Design Trust Director of Strategic Partnerships Elana Ehrenberg, who managed our projects with public housing communities. “Residents know what residents need best for their open spaces. When you’re building trust and designing with residents through these participatory processes, you need to be able to deliver on the values and vision that reflect the community.”
What can NYCHA look like when public housing residents have design agency over their communal spaces? Here’s a closer look at the four new spaces that exist today, imagined by and for residents:
At the Castle Hill Houses in the Bronx, residents advocated for NYCHA’s first-ever dog park.
As CJI documented, “The idea for the dog park took shape as a result of a vote by more than 800 Castle Hill Houses residents, in partnership with the Castle Hill Resident Association, on what kind of investment they’d like to see in their community. After casting their votes, residents worked with community partners, architects and designers from Grain Collective, and the Neighborhood Safety Initiatives team to shape the vision and feel of the park, hold workshopping sessions, and plan community events for the project’s culmination.”
The Castle Hill Houses space includes the new high-end dog park providing safe access to Castle Hill greenspaces for small and larger dogs along with turf mounds and water access, as well as an updated BBQ and picnic area, and maintenance updates to existing community public spaces. The project is complemented by 32 doggie waste stations, adorned with community art, and can be found throughout the Castle Hill campus.
Esteemed NYC Dog Mayor Simon, Council Majority Leader Amanda Farias, and other Bronx leaders joined the Green Space Connections team to cut the ribbon last year and let the dogs in.
“It takes a dog park to get people together for them to talk and communicate,” resident Jose Carrion told Gothamist. “All of a sudden everybody knows each other’s name. It’s crazy.” Watch how on a CBS New York segment here and a video documenting the process here.
Opened just last week, the Marlboro Houses in Brooklyn debuted a first-of-its-kind, eco-friendly pathway made of 450,000 recycled wine corks. The path is also home to custom-fabricated dynamic play and sensory features, native landscaping, and an innovative stormwater mitigation system. The layout improves navigation throughout the Gravesend campus and redevelops over 7,200 square feet of open space.
This half-million dollar-plus investment was brought to life by The Urban Conga, Cork Collective, The New York Climate Exchange, Field Form, IFIXXNYC Builders, Rockwell Group, 3×3, and the Marlboro Houses Resident Association.
“Everybody’s loving that cork,” Paula Jenkins, the president of the Marlboro Resident Association, told the New York Times. The Times elaborated, “For Marlboro Houses, which has seen its share of storm water flooding, cork has another advantage: It is water-absorbent, unlike asphalt and rubberized surfaces. Many residents of the complex remember the damage from the rain that accompanied Hurricane Irene in 2011 and the storm surge that accompanied Hurricane Sandy in 2012, as well as the flooding after Hurricane Ida five years ago.” Flood-proofing is a rising core concern for New York City. On the other hand of increasing climate damage to infrastructure, the innovative design and non-toxic plastic alternative is heat-friendly, staying up to 30% cooler in the summer than traditional rubber or asphalt.
At the Patterson Houses in the South Bronx, residents pushed for fitness and play areas that serve all ages and foster intergenerational community. “Many NYCHA properties were planned with young families in mind, but today, older adults want the outdoor areas to suit them too," said Alex Zablocki, executive director of the Public Housing Community Fund.
The resulting two upgraded playgrounds include a variety of play structures and sensory features for children with special needs, while the adjacent fitness zone features a stationary bike, pull-up bars, several accessible exercise stations, and strength training equipment. The new play and exercise equipment was designed, manufactured, and installed by Kompan. The basketball court’s wave mural was envisioned by local community members, who collaborated with the nonprofit Hoopbus to bring the design to life. “In 2023, the Green Space Connections program also led the way for the creation of a Patterson Houses mural [with Artolution] that features former boxing world champion Iran Barkley, NBA Hall of Fame basketball player Nate “Tiny” Archibald, actor Luis Antonio Ramos, and Platinum recording artist Prince Royce. The artwork celebrates the contributions of the former residents to the Patterson community as well as the Bronx as a whole,” wrote NYCHA journal.
“Envisioned through participatory design and painted by Artolution and youth and adult volunteers from Patterson Houses, I saw firsthand how the mural became a beacon for residents to convene and recall memories of their upbringing,” said Layman Lee, Director of Neighborhood Safety Initiatives at CJI. “The ‘Patterson Universe’ mural proudly celebrates Patterson Houses’ rich history and diverse community and serves as a visual catalyst for future public space projects.”
Watch the space in action on Bronx Net here and on News 12 here.
In Bed-Stuy, residents at the Roosevelt Houses transformed previously inaccessible green spaces into community destinations. With guidance from Unfrastructure and KCD Construction Corp, local feedback prioritized seating, shade, greenery, recreation, and gathering. More than 600 residents helped shape the initiative by voting on project priorities and participating in hands-on workshops.
“Before construction, surveys found that while many residents used the spaces daily, satisfaction with amenities, physical conditions and safety remained low. Fewer than one-third of respondents believed the spaces met their intended purpose and fewer than one in five were satisfied with the quality of available amenities,” Brooklyn Reader reported. Watch an archive of one community outreach event and resident interviews about the space here.
The newly designed green spaces, open to residents in Summer 2026, feature upgrades like planters, more places to sit and gather, game tables, a flexible play area, and a community garden, creating diverse opportunities for recreation and quiet reflection alike.
Across these sites, we’ve already heard reports of more daily use, stronger neighborhood connections, and a renewed sense of pride. But this work isn’t about infiltrating a community and attempting to reinvent the wheels already there. “One of the strongest signals to emerge from the Green Space Connections evaluation process was that residents already had a meaningful relationship with the green spaces in their neighborhood they had,” wrote the Public Housing Community Fund. “Long before construction began, people described these spaces as part of the rhythm of everyday life. Green Space Connections built on that foundation, using participatory design to strengthen a place that already carried memory, care, and possibility for the community, and treated community knowledge as essential project infrastructure. Even before construction began, residents told evaluators they would miss these green spaces if they disappeared. That attachment provides a clear starting point: invest in a place people already cared about and design it around the experiences and priorities they shared with you.”
Open space may not seem like a pressing top priority when many public housing residents suffer from stalled repairs, unreliable basic amenities, amongst other safety issues that have historically plagued an underfunded NYCHA. But beyond these targeted physical infrastructure improvements, Green Space Connections empowers communities with strengthened resident networks to continue to advocate for their rights to safe, affordable homes.
Tamara Greenfield and Layman Lee elaborate in a piece for Urban Omnibus about designing safer spaces. “What if the key to safety is simply giving people what they say they need to feel safe? Dollars not for subway cops and souped-up armored vehicles, but for better lighting, new parks and playgrounds, and long-overdue repairs?”
As they quoted Castle Hill Resident Association President Jeannette Salcedo reflecting, “We lose ourselves in believing we don’t deserve things.”
To amplify the lessons of the project and empower a wider reach of New York public housing residents, Green Space Connections created a practical design and resources guide for non-profit organizations and resident leaders to navigate the process of bringing open space projects to their communities. From Imagine to Activate, the NYCHA Open Space Toolkit, launched a citywide PSA, to raise awareness with NYCHA communities and potential public space partners. “We wanted to create a simple and inviting guide to encourage participation by residents and future partners, and are truly excited to see what projects and partnerships emerge,” said Design Trust for Public Space Policy and Planning Fellow Nicole Vlado Torres AIA, NOMA, and Communications and Design Fellow Blake Roberts, two of the leads on creating the toolkit.
“Through this effort, we’re hoping to renew the promise of public housing,” Zablocki said.
This past spring, it was announced that Green Space Connections would be expanded and brought to four more NYCHA sites, with continued funding from Helmsley. Next stops include Richmond Terrace Houses in Staten Island, Wagner and Vladeck Houses in Manhattan, and Ravenswood Houses in Queens.
While Design Trust’s direct collaboration on this project is coming to a close, we are ecstatic that this initiative continues to flourish and will continue to support and advocate for resident-led design across NYCHA, and beyond. This is our hope for all of our projects, that the lessons learned will take on a life of their own beyond the initial local parameters, and be able to independently scale broadly. Our unique model unifies government agencies, community groups and private-sector experts to transform and evolve the city's landscape. With every milestone from our 30-year project history, we try to act as a catalyst; delivering innovative, yet feasible, solutions for our project partners to implement.
Already, Opening the Edge and Green Space Connections have inspired national conversations about the intersections of public housing and public space, and stand as achievable precedents for funded, community-informed, and sustainable design excellence.
Public space and public housing movements have redefined our perceptions of what constitutes a “public” good. New Yorkers deserve these goods to be…good. Green Space Connections illuminates a path toward restoring collective resources and cultivating thriving neighborhoods, and more connected communities.
The Fund is hiring a “Green Space Consultant” to help realize the next phase of the program and lead community engagement and surveying. Request for Proposals deadline is 8/10/2026. They welcome proposals from community-based organizations, firms, advocacy groups, individual practitioners, partnerships, and non-traditional teams.
All Green Space Connections Photos by Tameek Williams, Pomonok Residents Association