Walking along Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Park, and Jackie Robinson Park in Upper Manhattan, you will encounter striking rock outcrops known as Manhattan Schist. These rugged, glimmering formations are geological records of the tectonic processes that occurred millions of years ago. Rescinding into the trees or pushing right up against the streets, the outcrops place themselves based on the primordial logic of erosion, heat, and pressure. Like a metaphor, the exposed layers of the schist have witnessed the history of New York City and Harlem, silently standing through decades of change and resilience.
From when Manhattan was first imagined, urban parks were treated as an afterthought — spaces that only emerged where the demands of profit-driven development failed. In the 1807 “Commissioners Map of the City of New York,” John Randel Jr. imposed an urban grid onto Manhattan (Figure 1) that covers the outcrops as if the land was a tabula rasa — empty, flat, devoid of history or presence; as if whatever or whoever inhabited the land could be subdued and contained within its bounds.
Implementing the grid in its totality proved to be difficult. Rocks, swamps, and marshland defy the logic of a grid. While some of them were eventually contained within the grid (Central Park was famously created to deal with these unwanted features), the rock outcrops in Upper Manhattan refused to conform. They bent the grid to accommodate their presence, forming the linear parks we know today.
The resistance of the rock is an assertion of their material agency. Here, agency is no longer an exclusively human attribute. Like Jane Bennett, the author of “Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things,” argued, “there was never a time when human agency was anything other than an interfolding network of humanity and nonhumanity” (p. 31). The rocks’ refusal to be flattened is not a failure of human ingenuity. The rocks have never been passive; their sheer presence and materiality defy human attempts at domination.
The stubborn outcrops had been the agents of making Manhattan, and they should continue to act as agents of resilience and change for Harlem. Only by attributing agency to them can we foster the conversation to celebrate these geological treasures the land has granted to Harlem and preserve these sanctuaries of nature in the bustling metropolis.
Figure 1. 1893 redrawing of 1807 version of commissioners’ grid plan for Manhattan, a few years before it was adopted in 1811. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners’_Plan_of_1811#/media/File:NYC-GRID-1811.png 
Figure 3. Student work of CCNY’s Master of Landscape Architecture program. (Image credit: Mary Daly and Ximena Diaz Velasco) 
Figure 4. Corridor of Art, Culture, and Ecology. (© OSE and Bond Center)
Over the years, faculty and students in the Landscape Architecture program of the City College of New York have been exploring ideas for using this geological feature in Manhattan as the centerpiece of a landscape corridor that connects Central Park West to Upper Manhattan (Figure 3). In ecology, “corridors” are important features in ecosystems that connect one ecological patch to another. They serve as connective tissues of the urban ecosystem that allow the flow of animals, material, energy, and nutrients. When properly cared for, this landscape corridor in Harlem could become a critical green infrastructure for resilience and adaptation to climate change — the corridors serve as sponges to soak up excessive stormwater, cool the temperature in hot summer months, and serve as carbon sinks to store CO2 as biomass.
Since 2024, a coalition of organizations in Harlem, led by the West Harlem Art Fund and the Bond Center and supported by the Office of Speculative Ecologies, has relied on the outcrops of the Manhattan schists as an anchor and public art as a catalyst to construct stories and visions for a more resilient Harlem. “A Corridor of Art, Culture, and Ecology” — a working title of this vision for the three parks — encapsulates the intention to create a new form of public space centered around community-driven and adaptive landscape practice (Figures 4 and 5). Three key conceptual shifts embrace this vision.
From beautification to resilient urban ecology
Discussions about public parks must move beyond the narrow focus on beautification. While urban parks do provide esthetic and recreational value, they are far more than the icing on the cake: Urban parks are vital ecosystems that support the well-being of both human and nonhuman communities. As critical green infrastructure, they require sustained investment to ensure their maintenance and ecological integrity.
Urban parks have always been a low priority for funding and budget, though, because they are treated as a luxury rather than a necessity. If their ecological functions are emphasized and move beyond beautification, different streams of funding and resources can be accessed.
From maintenance to sustained care
Maintenance often implies preserving a status quo, favoring equilibrium and resisting change. However, rapid climate change brings more unexpected weather events that challenge what has been regarded as a baseline for maintenance. Events like the devastating California wildfires illustrate this reality and recall the bushfires of last fall, which resonates with New Yorkers.
In contrast to maintenance, caretaking embodies attentiveness and adaptation, prioritizing the evolving needs of those receiving care. When extended to urban ecology, this distinction becomes profound: Maintenance reflects human-centered desires for stability, while caretaking emphasizes the interconnected needs of urban ecosystems, fostering resilience and adaptation in the face of change. Shifting from “maintaining” to “caring for” represents a conceptual transformation that calls for co-evolution with the needs of urban ecosystems and the communities that benefit from them.
From volunteerism to career paths
The green transition requires an upskilled workforce. For example, the NYC Urban Forest Agenda seeks to achieve 30% canopy (tree) cover by 2035. A forest needs experts to oversee forest land, manage budgets, create plans for forestry projects, and supervise forest and conservation technicians and workers. An entire new job market around urban forestry can be imagined. In fact, one of the agenda’s goals is to “cultivate urban forest careers.”
Current community involvement in park maintenance largely relies on volunteerism. To sustain healthy urban ecosystems requires dedicated arborists, experienced horticulturalists, visionary landscape architects, and other well-trained experts. Pathways must be forged for local youths who care about their neighborhoods to become experts in taking care of the urban ecosystems. Brotherhood Sister Sol is a great pioneer — and more are needed.
Shurui Zhang is an urban designer and researcher focused on creating resilient and inclusive cities. At WXY, she worked on urban waterfront projects and infrastructure vision plans. As a Virginia Sea Grant fellow, she contributed to the Virginia Coastal Adaptation Master Plan, which supported coastal resilience efforts through both administrative work and research.
Zihao Zhang is a designer, educator, and scholar in landscape architecture and an assistant professor and director of the landscape architecture program at the City College of New York Spitzer School of Architecture. As a landscape theorist, he provides critical analyses of the entanglement between nature and technology, the human and nonhuman realms, as well as ecosystems and intelligent machines.