WELCOME TO GREEN ROOFS
NYC!
green roof events
Green roof updates
September 2022
green roof spotlight
The Lotus Garden, one of the first green roof gardens in NYC was created 38 years ago when the developer of The Columbia, a massive condominium at 96th and Broadway, agreed to create a garden on top of an about-to-be-built parking garage to accommodate community gardeners who had planted the site when it was derelict.
Why are so many birds dying in new york city?
Because of research programs like our own Project Safe Flight, we now understand that up to one billion birds are killed in collisions with glass across the U.S. each year. As the conservation community has come to grasp the gravity of this threat to birds over recent decades, architects and design professionals have responded to the growing call for bird-friendly design.
Today there are solutions available that make glass visible to birds, options for bird-friendly construction materials, and a multitude of ways to design buildings to minimize their risk of harming birds. The glass facades of modern office buildings are not only dangerous to birds; they can also dramatically increase energy consumption for heating and cooling. As a result, bird-friendly design elements are now often considered an integral part of sustainable design.
REGISTER FOR THE STATE OF GREENROOFS
The theme of this year's State of Green Roofs is action. How do we make positive change on green roofs, and what changes are underway? This conference is designed to engage everyone, from the general public to industry specialists, architects, and scientists. Highlights include open discussion across disciplines, tours of the Javits green roof, and action-oriented workshops. Learn about green roof biodiversity, environmental benefits, and NYC policy.
Registration for the State of Green Roofs is free but required.
Registration for the State of Green Roofs allows you access to the full Nest Summit Campus on September 22. To attend the Nest Summit on September 21, register here. For the full Campus agenda, visit here.
New in Research
Examining the distribution of green roofs in New York City through a lens of social, ecological, and technological filters - published in Ecology and Society.
In 2018 the team at The Nature Conservancy, in collaboration with Timon McPhearson (The New School), Eric Sanderson (Wildlife Conservation Society), and Greg Yetman (Columbia University), released a dataset representing our best approximation of the green roofs in NYC as of 2016.
We finally have an associated peer-reviewed paper out about the work, which offers insights into some of the dynamics of where green roofs were in the City at that point, and potential drivers and implications of their distribution:
The paper is available at It’s also part of a special issue on Blue and Green Infrastructure, which might be of interest to this group – see here)
essential reads
Last spring, the New York City Council passed an ambitious climate legislation package focused on buildings, which are responsible for almost three-quarters of all local emissions.
GRRA members Dustin R. Partridge and Danielle Spiegel-Feld sit down with Urban Omnibus to clarify what New York’s new climate laws can mean for city residents, building owners, and birds.