New York City’s mayor-elect stands on the threshold of confronting the city’s urgent affordable housing crisis, making it the cornerstone of his administration. Yet his ambitious plans are already facing resistance—especially concerning the future of beloved urban green spaces such as Elizabeth Street Garden.
This situation highlights a broader dilemma faced by fast-growing cities: how to provide essential housing without sacrificing vital environmental health and community spaces.
Bipartisan Push to Build More Housing Sparks Clash Over Elizabeth Street Garden
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has made it clear that addressing the shortage of affordable housing is his top priority. He envisions leveraging the public sector to build homes that the private market has failed to provide—a critical need in a city where housing costs continue to rise.
This commitment has led him into an unexpected alliance and public discussion with former President Donald Trump who, despite their past political differences, found common ground with Mamdani on the need for more development in New York City. Both leaders expressed a shared desire to “build more,” suggesting a potential bipartisan approach to urban expansion.
However, the road to fulfilling these housing promises is fraught with challenges. One major point of tension is the proposal to build public senior housing on the site of Elizabeth Street Garden. This cherished Manhattan oasis—adorned with neoclassical statues, pear trees, and rose bushes—is a cultural and environmental asset to its community. The debate intensified when outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, shortly before the recent municipal election, designated the garden as “permanently” protected parkland—a move that now requires state legislative approval for any future development.
Mayor-elect Mamdani expressed frustration with Adams’s decision, calling it an obstacle to his campaign pledge to provide shelter for the homeless. Ironically, Adams himself had previously attempted to develop the same site for low-income seniors, but faced fierce opposition from neighborhood activists. This history underscores the complexity of the debate, as both sides present compelling arguments: the undeniable need for affordable housing versus the essential role of urban green spaces.
Green Space vs. Housing: Rethinking NYC’s Urban Future
New York City faces a severe housing crisis: tens of thousands rely on the shelter system, and a large portion of renters spend more than half of their income on housing. Yet green spaces are no longer a luxury—they are a necessity for urban health. They cool the air, filter pollution, and offer psychological relief. Environmental justice advocates rightly argue that a healthy city requires both roofs for residents and roots for its ecosystem. Soaring real estate values often force city leaders into a painful choice: homes or habitats, people or plants.
But this supposed contradiction might be false. History shows that common green spaces were once integral to urban life. From the shared greens of colonial New England—where villagers gathered food and grazed animals—to the informal working-class gardens in cities like Washington, D.C., and New York, these areas provided essential resources and strengthened community resilience. Even iconic parks like Central Park, before becoming symbols of elite leisure, began as modest “wastelands” tended by working families.
In recent decades, ordinary citizens have continuously reclaimed neglected urban spaces. During New York City’s economic downturns in the 1970s, communities transformed abandoned lots into hundreds of vibrant community gardens across all five boroughs. Elizabeth Street Garden itself was born of this spirit, leased in the 1990s to prevent its conversion into a parking lot, then nurtured into the unique sanctuary it is today.
The core issue may not be whether to save a single garden, but how to revive the concept of urban commons. For far too long, New York’s shared spaces have been dictated by car-centered infrastructure rather than people-centered design. Robert Moses’s legacy of highways and parking lots—occupying nearly a quarter of the city’s area—demonstrates the prioritization of vehicles over human housing.
Yet a shift is underway. Initiatives like the “Green Streets Program” encourage redesigning urban areas with gardens, green drainage systems, and bike lanes. The mayor-elect’s vision aligns with this trend: proposing high-speed bus corridors, pedestrian zones, and most importantly, converting parking lots into public housing. This approach could redefine the city, opening space for a “greener skyline,” where concrete is replaced by orchards, community spaces, and even edible urban forests—drawing inspiration from Ron Finley’s famous “guerrilla gardening” in South Central Los Angeles.
Lessons from Europe’s Urban Transformation
European cities offer powerful large-scale examples. Paris, under Mayor Anne Hidalgo, has replaced tens of thousands of parking spaces and hundreds of traffic lanes with gardens, bike paths, and tree-lined parks, transforming the riverbanks and winning public support. Amsterdam and Copenhagen are likewise redesigning their infrastructure, incorporating wetlands and rooftop gardens to manage stormwater and improve livability. Even London is reintroducing beavers to help manage floodwaters.
These international models show that climate adaptation, social justice, and urban development are not competing goals but interconnected parts of a unified vision. Thus, the debate over Elizabeth Street Garden can be reframed not as a binary choice but as an opportunity to embrace a holistic vision of urban commons.
The mayor-elect’s plan to convert 500 asphalt schoolyards into 500 neighborhood green spaces, create thousands of union jobs, transform schools into resilience centers, and prioritize neighborhoods long neglected embodies this integrated approach—promising a more equitable, greener, and sustainable future for New York City.