Skip to Content
Streetsblog New York City home
Streetsblog New York City home
Log In
Op/Ed

OPINION: Want to Prevent Flooding? Turn ‘Parking’ Into Greenspace

Bioswales!

Today at 10 a.m., the Council Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by Selvena Brooks-Powers, will take up the issue of preventing floods in the city. Here's an opinion piece by a staffer at Transportation Alternatives urging the Council to think more broadly about infrastructure than just what's underground.

The weather is getting hotter, wetter, and more destructive. We're not going to abandon these archipelagos we call home, so we need to make them more resilient to climate change. That starts with less pavement and more permeable surfaces.

As Hurricane Ida swept through New York City last fall, apartments flooded, subway service shut down, and our streets turned into rivers. An entire month’s worth of rain fell on New York in a matter of hours — and there was no place for the water to go.

When drains back up, stormwater searches for any opening it can find — apartments, subway grates, and station entrances. At present, 72 percent of New York City’s land area is impervious to water, making flash flooding more common and dangerous.

Extreme weather is not going away. Already this year, we’ve seen subways flood from less rain than Ida brought. Our leaders must adapt New York City to protect our neighbors, our transit system, and our neighborhoods from the dangers flash flooding creates.

One immediate solution: Turn asphalt into a resilience tool.

We must transform impervious driving lanes into green climate solutions. For example, we should build bioswales — landscape elements designed to absorb and filter stormwater before it enters the sewer system — in place of parking.

Even a single tree planted in a small pit can reduce rain runoff by around 60 percent, even during the winter.

City leaders should be adding these greenspaces citywide. In addition to mitigating the risk of flood buildup across the city, parks, gardens, and bioswales are tools to fight climate change.

And, if asphalt can be transformed into an asset, New York City has a lot of it.

Central Queens has 1,600 acres of roadbed. Yet right of way green infrastructure make up just three acres, according to a recent report from the Regional Plan Association.

Citywide, Mayor Eric Adams controls 6,300 miles of streets and three million free parking spaces. By converting just a portion of that to greener and more resilient uses, he can save lives and billions of dollars. A vision of what could be is outlined in Transportation Alternatives’ NYC 25x25 challenge, a call for our leaders to repurpose 25% of our streetspace to better uses by 2025.

To begin, he must repurpose some of our street space for tools such as bioswales, prioritizing areas in highest need. While the loss of some free parking for inanimate objects may raise concerns from a few loud voices, it pales in comparison to the loss of life and livelihood in the aftermath of a storm.

Rather than be the cause of, our streets can become the solution to climate change and flooding. We need leaders with the vision and will to repurpose our streets into pathways for resiliency.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog New York City

Ugly Truth: Feds’ Canal Street Raid Pushed Aside NYPD, Safety and Free Speech

President Trump's heavily armed and masked immigration troops are turning American cities into battlegrounds — and eliminating accountability and free speech in the public realm.

October 27, 2025

Bikelashers Beware! Court Street Redesign Has Turned Chaos to Safety

Court Street's protected bike lane already shows a lot of promise. But that doesn't stop the hate.

October 27, 2025

Adams Administration Has Made It Nearly Impossible To Build Safe E-Bike Charging Stations

It's impossible to build an e-bike charging cabinet in NYC, despite city initiatives meant to boost the industry.

October 27, 2025

That’s Rich! DoorDash Supports E-Bike Speed Limit

DoorDash supports a 15-mile-per-hour speed limit, but that's easy for them to say, given that under-pressure workers will be the ones getting tickets.

October 27, 2025

Monday’s Headlines: Everybody to the Limit Edition

Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani wants to keep the 15-mph Citi Bike e-bike speed limit. Plus more news.

October 27, 2025

Friday Video: Amtrak Is Way More Successful Than You Think

Why do so many people still treat Amtrak as a failure — and what would it take to deliver the rail investment that American riders deserve?

October 24, 2025
See all posts