In New York City, parks are a critical way to escape the bustle, let children play freely, and engage in fun activities with and members of the community.

To take advantage of park resources, you have to know what’s available. Below, you’ll find a series of visual tools built to help increase awareness of the city’s parks.

These tools will allow you to explore upcoming events, discover some of New York City’s parks facilities and amenities, and learn more about how park maintenance is financed.

• Facilities
• Events

It’s important that all parks receive enough money to keep running–not just the ones with the most visitors. The map below uses the most recent data available to break down how public spending for 2018 was utilized to perform park maintenance. As applicable, the map shows the total sum of money a park has received from private funding. There are a lot of considerations that go into deciding what maintenance a park receives. While this tool is limited based on available data, it gives you an impression of how much funding your neighborhood parks are getting.

Many large and heavily-trafficked parks rely on private funding for maintenance and for hosting events. There’s often a stark difference between the public maintenance and the private funding these parks receive. In FY 2018, the greatest contrasts occurred in Manhattan, where Bryant Park received $2,408 in public maintenance funding, compared to $8,584,181 in private funding for the year. Central Park received significantly more public funding at $446,300, but received $24,717,743 in private funding – by far the most of any park.

Manhattan parks receive more private funding than parks in other boroughs. This means parks in other boroughs have to rely more on public spending for maintenance. Prospect Park, for example, received $1,173,653 in public funding – more than double what Central Park received – but only $1,942,874 in private funding – roughly one twelfth of Central Park’s private budget.

Smaller parks and playgrounds received extremely varied amounts of funding, from less than $5,000 in public funding to more than $190,000. The number and kind of facilities at a park influences this number. It is likely funding received is also partly controlled by perceived visitor traffic, but at present there is no data available on this issue.

For feedback, comments, and questions please email Data@council.nyc.gov.

Created by the NYC City Council Data Team.

Data Sources