Vacant Lot Analysis: Greening Newark’s Unused Spaces

Greening Opportunities Outside City Parks: Newark’s Vacant Lots

In 2024, the City of Newark listed 3,082 public and private vacant lots across the city, totaling 804 acres, or ~5% of land in the city.

Vacant lots hold great potential. They can be transformed into pocket parks, new or expanded community gardens, or sites for green infrastructure (GI) like pollinator gardens.

Rabbit Hole Farm

Thanks to programs like Adopt a Lot, Newarkers have already been doing this, transforming vacant lots into thriving community gardens that act as educational and recreation spaces. 

Adopt a Lot lets Newark residents lease a vacant lot for $1 a year.

19 community gardens lease their land using Adopt a Lot.

Community gardens are cultural centers and places of learning. Find a list of these gardens and urban farms here:

Creative Greening Strategies - Vacant Lot Mapping

Vacant lots can also become public parks, flower gardens, or other sites of nature and recreation.

To support stewardship of vacant lots, TPL mapped publicly and privately owned vacant lots with existing public parks and open spaces (i.e., cemeteries), planned GI, and installed GI.

Vacant Lot Analysis

This vacant lot analysis can provide a range of stakeholders—across organizations and disciplines—data to inform future work for prioritizing vacant lots for green space, such as where to

  • build a new park,

  • expand an existing community garden, or

  • to install GI like a pollinator garden.

This analysis can also show where a potential project may fit into the larger GI/open space network in Newark.

Results of the analysis can be found in the following forms:

  • interactive map (if you zoom in and click on a vacant lot, you can see related stats, such as proximity to a enviro risks) 

  • spreadsheet 

  • static maps (enviro risks in relation to vacant lots & existing GI) 

Data used

  • List of vacant lot parcels (Source: City of Newark, Department of Economic and Housing Development 2024)

  • Planned and installed GI (Source: Newark DIG and Newark’s RainReady program 2024)