Products, Vendors, CAD Files, Spec Sheets and More...
Sign up for LAWeekly newsletter
New Yorkers realize the future of their great American city is based on making the city livable while overcoming the obstacles posed by an environment under stress. To meet the challenges set forth in the recently adopted sustainability plan for New York City, dubbed Planyc, the mayor?EUR??,,????'?????<
Some 127 new initiatives are underway to make improvements to land, air, water, energy and transportation, the five serious sustainability issues facing a city expected to grow to over nine million people by 2030.
There is a lot to like about the plan that promises all residents will live within a 10-minute walk to a neighborhood park, that cycling will be maximized and car-dependent travel reduced. This plan will strive to insure the land, air and water will be cleaner in the next century. Just planting the one-million street trees to rebuild the urban forest canopy will significantly change what many misled people believe is a concrete settlement.
?EUR??,,????'?????<?EUR??,,????'?????<
The city has realized for a long time that nature can perform critical ecosystem services. Environmental improvement in the city is evidenced by the state?EUR??,,????'?????<
But of most interest in Planyc are the green initiatives being prepared by the N.Y.C. Planning Department. These initiatives are contained within text amendments to the N.Y.C. Zoning Resolutions. These zoning amendments together comprise the community?EUR??,,????'?????<
It is certainly interesting that that it has taken such a long time to codify landscape design standards in New York City. But these new design standards contained within zoning regulations will do much to make the city more sustainable and greener. After all, that is what landscape and tree ordinances do and have been doing in hundreds of other communities in this country since the late 1960s.
The landscape code provides standards for parking lot design, street yard garden design, enhanced open space standards, buffer yards and standards for on-site storm water management.
According to N.Y.C. Planning Director Amanda Burden the landscape code will enhance the attractiveness of neighborhood streets, provide additional site open space, mitigate storm water run-off and reduce surrounding air temperatures. The new code will reduce paving, increase permeability and set standards for the design of fences, walls, and front stoops.
Much of the new code standards are not new to most community landscape codes. But what is innovative are the requirements for redesigning parking lots to be green so that they may add to the sustainability design of the city. The best way to make improvements to the environment of any large city is to rethink automobile parking lots. If additional green space is desired there are two places to look in order to acquire more?EUR??,,????'?????<
Green parking is proposed by the city and these regulations provide leadership for many other communities across the county to reclaim urban open space to do environmental work. The parking standards provide several services. The increase public safety though higher pedestrian and vehicular circulation control. In addition, the new standards work to infiltrate storm water, reduce the urban heat island effect and improve the quality of the connecting streetscape. Finally, the standards replace paving with landscaping that will do much to rebuild nature in the city by placing emphasis on green space at the expense of the automobile.
Design components for green parking include design standards for street trees, perimeter screening, circulation and parking lot interiors. The latter includes standards for planted bio-swales, eight-foot wide interior islands and the design of underground storm water retention cells. In addition, design details require a 15-foot street frontage with five feet devoted to street trees planted 25-feet on center.
A seven- foot wide perimeter street yard planting strip abuts the streetscape zone and is to be planted with small trees 25-feet on center as well as ground covers, grasses and low shrubs. Fences and walls are optional but must be only 48-inches tall. Parking perimeter trees and streetscape trees must be staggered 20-feet on center to make a unified streetscape elevation.
Under this new landscape code, parking losses will be two percent of total spaces, allowing an increase of permeability of 9.85 percent, and average tree canopy coverage of 16.15 percent. This certainly is not too much to give up too make a greener city.
Communities would do well to redesign their parking lots to be sustainable, as the Planyc Sustainability Plan suggests. See the proposal for green parking at nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/parking_lots/presentation.shtml
Francisco Uviña, University of New Mexico
Hardscape Oasis in Litchfield Park
Ash Nochian, Ph.D. Landscape Architect
November 12th, 2025
Sign up to receive Landscape Architect and Specifier News Magazine, LA Weekly and More...
Invalid Verification Code
Please enter the Verification Code below
You are now subcribed to LASN. You can also search and download CAD files and spec sheets from LADetails.