Sendero Verde in East Harlem transforms a long vacant block into a sustainable community anchored by a half-acre rooftop courtyard. Designed as an intensive green landscape, the courtyard provides a playground, interpretive learning gardens, art and science spaces for a charter school, exercise areas connected to a preventive health facility, and a raised performance stage with an amphitheater.

At street level, four community gardens that are part of East Harlem’s heritage have been relocated and integrated into the project, ensuring continuity between old and new green spaces. The landscape creates opportunities for play, learning, gathering, and respite while supporting the broader vision of affordable housing and community health.

Visitors will see how design, ecology, and culture come together in this unique development, which was recently recognized with an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects. The tour, led by Gonzalo Cruz, ASLA, Design Principal, AECOM LAUD NYC, highlights how Sendero Verde’s landscape strengthens neighborhood identity and serves as a model for inclusive open space in dense urban settings.