2022 Class of Fellows, Nancy Prince, New York Chapter
New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, New York, New York
Few landscape architects in the United States have had as much impact and reach as Nancy Prince. As the Chief of Landscape Architecture for NYC Parks, she leads 100 landscape architects and consultants to set a higher design standard-centered on excellence, innovation, accessibility, resilience, and sustainability-that affects every city resident who visits a park. Her professional portfolio encompasses 30,000 acres spread across 5,000 properties, accounting for fourteen percent of the land in a city of almost nine million people with a ten-year capital budget of $5.5 billion. During her thirty-six-year career, she has worked to ensure historically significant properties benefit from thoughtful preservation and sensitive design. Nancy has also taken a leadership team role in the $71 million Central Park 2000 renovation and as the city representative on the Hudson River Park Trust design committee. Nancy led NYC Parks on the Community Parks Initiative (CPI) to ensure equitable park access, particularly in historically underserved neighborhoods, transforming sixty-three spaces into centers of community activity set within significant new greenspace and trees. Nancy worked with the NYC Department of City Planning to create new open space design guidelines for private developers, addressing climate resiliency, material durability, access to public restrooms, and accessibility for the disabled. More mundane projects such as water pumping stations, ferry landings, and utility structures, have also become greener, more context sensitive, and more welcoming thanks to Nancy's work.
