Brooklyn recreation deserts expose a widening park gap
brooklyn is home to some of New York City’s best-known parks, but a recent report says parts of the borough also sit in some of the city’s starkest recreation deserts. The Center for an Urban Future says the gap is leaving residents in several neighborhoods with far fewer places to play, train, and gather.
The report identifies five community districts across the city as recreation deserts, and two are in brooklyn. Community Board 12, which includes Midwood, Borough Park, Kensington and Ocean Parkway, has 41 facilities, while Community Board 9, covering Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Wingate, has 48.
By comparison, Community Board 3, which includes Bed-Stuy, has 190 facilities. The report says the missing amenities include soccer and cricket pitches, volleyball and pickleball courts, and pools, forcing many residents to leave their neighborhoods to find them.
What the report says about brooklyn
The Center for an Urban Future describes recreation deserts as areas where residents have minimal access to recreation opportunities, much like the idea of a food desert. In brooklyn, the report says that shortage falls hardest on lower-income households, which may struggle more to reach facilities outside their neighborhoods.
Eli Dvorkin, the group’s Editorial and Policy Director and a co-author of the recreation report, said the issue is not just about space, but about health and daily life. “Brooklyn has always been a place where movement is part of daily life. But today, Brooklynites, like all New Yorkers, are moving less, feeling more isolated and dealing with elevated rates of chronic diseases, ” Dvorkin said.
He added that recreation should be central to how the borough responds to those pressures, but investment has declined over time. Dvorkin said funding for recreation in the city has fallen from 31% of the NYC Parks Department’s budget 50 years ago to 5. 3% today.
Budget pressure and official response
The report lands as city leaders face questions about park spending. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s preliminary budget sets aside $654 million, or 0. 5% of the city’s budget, for parks, which is half of the 1% he promised during the campaign and includes a $33. 7 million cut from the current parks budget.
Deputy Press Secretary Jeremy Edwards said the mayor remains committed to the 1% pledge and plans to use his proposed tax on the city’s wealthiest residents to reach that level. A parks spokesperson said, “NYC Parks is committed to delivering high-quality recreation amenities for all New Yorkers, especially in areas that have typically been underserved. ”
New parks commissioner Tricia Shimamura has also signaled support for boosting public recreation programs and upgrading facilities. Dvorkin said NYC Parks should commit at least 20% of its budget to recreation, pointing to Chicago and Philadelphia as examples of cities that direct a larger share of parks spending to recreation.
Why the gap matters now
The report says participation in recreation programs has declined sharply, with visits to the city’s 36 recreation centers down almost 40% since 2019. Dvorkin said that does not show weak demand; instead, he described an underfunded system that cannot keep pace, with fewer staff, less upkeep, and shrinking programming.
Waitlists for children’s recreation programming continue to grow, the report says, while open facilities remain limited in the neighborhoods that need them most. That leaves brooklyn at the center of a wider debate over whether the city is investing enough in everyday recreation as a public health and quality-of-life issue.
For now, the question raised by the report is direct: where are brooklyn’s recreation deserts, and what will it take to close them before the gap grows wider?
