When every day brings some new, head-spinning event on the world stage, when polarization seems to define our national discourse, now is a good time to stop and give thanks for the bastion of solace in the heart of New York City — Central Park.
It’s easy to take for granted. The park’s 843 acres float like a cloud atop Manhattan, seemingly immune from the winds of change. But 2025 will usher in a series of critical changes to the park — beyond our budding spring flowers.
The Central Park Conservancy, which has restored and managed the park for four decades, has higher ambitions: for Central Park to be a civic laboratory committed to confronting some of the more vexing urban policy challenges of our time.
We want to answer thorny questions like, how can we make shared spaces work for everyone? How do we accommodate new forms of mobility? How can we dramatically augment learn-to-swim programs for children and adults? How can we help to create healthier neighborhoods?
It starts today, when crews will begin repaving and restriping most of the six-mile loop road at the heart of Central Park. The park’s drives have not been so fully reimagined in decades, and the coming changes are very much intended to reflect today’s transportation eco-system, while maintaining the park’s design intent.
In line with a study undertaken by the Conservancy in collaboration with NYC DOT and NYC Parks & Recreation, pedestrians and joggers will get more dedicated space, and crosswalks will be re-designed to shorten the distance from one side to the other. Bikes will be more intuitively channeled, and speedier e-vehicles will be coaxed to an outer lane mostly reserved for work and emergency vehicles, the better to separate them from more leisurely visitors.
Longer term, new pathways will provide safe, legal ways for bikes to cross the park from east to west. This includes new, protected bike lanes in the park’s sunken crosstown transverses, starting at 86th St., which the DOT has agreed to explore.
The re-imagining of the drives will coincide with another landmark moment in the park: the opening of the new Davis Center at the Harlem Meer next month. The center will provide a larger-than-Olympic sized pool in the summer that will convert to a skating rink in the winter and a new public green in the spring and fall.
Never before has an outdoor New York City pool been devised to allow for year-round recreational programming, but thanks to its unique platform system, activities will change with the seasons rather than closing for months at a time between the skating and swimming season. In the summer, those activities will include expanded learn-to-swim classes, access to which remains deeply inequitable, especially in low-income communities.
The same is true when it comes to accessing fresh, healthy produce, a particularly acute problem in Harlem and East Harlem. That’s why we started a farmstand last summer on 110th St. in partnership with the Corbin Hill Food Project, a nonprofit that sources all its food from BIPOC-owned farms upstate.
Finally, this spring the Conservancy will be rolling out its own Ranger Corps, a dedicated team that will focus on quality-of-life challenges in the park. As the most visited tourist attraction in the country, Central Park has been inundated by illegal vendors, especially unlicensed and uninsured pedicab operators who blatantly target tourists.
We are not alone in feeling a sense of disorder. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has already announced citywide plans to start a new NYPD division focused on quality-of-life infractions. As use of the park continues to grow, Central Park’s new Rangers will help with that task within park, not by issuing summonses but by providing a new, expanded uniformed presence in the park, and by working closely with the Central Park Precinct and with our agency partners to better serve the public.
Central Park will always be New York City’s backyard, and the Conservancy is deeply grateful for the trust that the city has placed in us to protect the Park’s legacy as a sanctuary. But Central Park can also be a proving ground for good ideas that can be transferred to other neighborhoods and parks around the city. That means continuing to welcome people of all stripes to the park, and, sometimes, adding new stripes to the ground as well.
Smith is president and CEO of the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that manages Central Park under a contract with the City of New York.