Sunset Park Among NYC Neighborhoods With The Least Playgrounds

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — Kids in Sunset Park likely have one of the hardest times finding a place to play, a new study by the city's comptroller found.

The neighborhood landed on a list of the 15 areas in the city that have the least number of playgrounds for the number of children that live there, or less than seven for every 10,000 kids.

In Sunset Park and Windsor Terrace, which were grouped together in the report, there are only 5.1 playgrounds for every 10,000 children, putting the area 10th on the list of 15. That number is also likely to only go down as the neighborhoods' populations rise.

Sunset Park and Windsor Terrace's population of kids rose from around 19,300 children in 2010 to just under 21,500 children in 2017, or an increase of 11 percent.

"(O)ur findings reveal stark disparities in access to these critical public spaces in New York City," Comptroller Scott Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement. "That's why our City needs to overhaul the planning, construction, and maintenance of our playground system."

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The low number of playgrounds wasn't unusual for the borough.

Brooklyn was rated the lowest of the five boroughs for the number of playgrounds, with just eight playgrounds for every 10,000 children younger than 10 years old Brooklyn-wide. That's almost half as many as Manhattan, which has 15 per 10,000 children.

Kings County had nine of the 15 community districts with the fewest playgrounds per capita, including the worst in the city, the comptroller's office says. Community District 12, encompassing Kensington, Borough Park and Ocean Parkway, has just 2 playgrounds per 10,000 children despite being home to nearly 30,000 kids younger than 10 in 2017, the report found.

The report also found that, even where there are playgrounds, many are dangerous. More than 500 overseen by the Parks Department posed some risk of injury to people using them, the report released Saturday says.

The latest round of Parks Department inspections in 2018 found "unacceptable" conditions in 24% of Brooklyn playgrounds, nearly triple the rate of 9% in Staten Island, the report shows. More than a quarter of playgrounds were unacceptable in 12 community districts citywide — six of which were in Brooklyn, the comptroller's office said.

The city is home to 2,067 playgrounds, about half of which are run by the Parks Department, the report says. That number amounts to just 2.4 playgrounds per 10,000 residents, placing the Big Apple 48th among the 100 biggest U.S. cities in terms of playgrounds per capita, according to the report.

Read more about the report here.