Why Parks?
NCP works closely with small cities and their underserved communities to create parks where they are most needed, bringing greater health and happiness through play, exercise, and contact with nature, and building environmental and community resilience.
Parks are crucial to our physical and cognitive development and to our overall health and well-being. They offer our bodies and brains active play, exercise, and socialization, as well as the contact with nature that humans are programmed to need. What’s more, they cost-effectively filter stormwater runoff and cool and filter air.
However, 3 out of 4 children in under-resourced neighborhoods can’t walk to a safe park. Teens in low-income communities are half as likely to have access to parks as their peers in more affluent neighborhoods. A recent Trust for Public Land study concluded that parks in under-resourced neighborhoods are half the size and four times more crowded than parks in wealthier neighborhoods.
“Parks are places to play, to commune, to escape into nature, to build mind and muscle. Our need for nature and recreation is part of our DNA and green space should be part of every urban neighborhood.”
Rose Harvey
Executive Director, New City Parks
Our Story
New City Parks (NCP) was launched in 2020 by Rose Harvey, former Commissioner of NY State Parks and previously National Director of Urban Programs for the Trust for Public Land, to address the special challenges smaller cities face in realizing their visions of safe, appealing, and well-designed parks.
NCP has quickly expanded park access across the Northeast. As of early 2026, we’ve worked in nine cities on 25 projects, from small neighborhood lots to major citywide and regional parks. With private support, we provide community engagement, engineering, design, financing, and project oversight that our cities can’t access on their own — and unlocked more than $63 million in public capital to turn community visions into real parks. Seven NCP parks are already open, serving over 150,000 people, and seven more are under construction this year. After our parks open, we stay with cities for two years to anchor use and community ownership.
New City Parks is a nonprofit, tax-exempt charitable organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Your contribution is 100% tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. Tax ID #27-4359120.
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Images courtesy of: ScenicHudson.org ('Learn more about our process'); NJCDC/Elizabeth Lara-Collado (Rose Harvey’s Headshot); Vassar Environmental Collaborative/Jennifer Rubbo (‘Learn more about our projects')