Who We Are

The Park Slope Civic Council  nurtures, defends, celebrates and invigorates this community we call home.

Without the Civic Council, the Park Slope we know today would not exist. In the 1950s and ‘60s, we organized to stop urban renewal’s bulldozers, fought bank redlining, planted thousands of trees, and launched our annual House Tour to present Park Slope as an alternative to would-be suburbanites.

In 1973, we secured our neighborhood’s future when we won designation of the Park Slope Historic District, and we helped safeguard its character in our push for the City’s first “downzoning,” passed in 2003.

In 2007, we took the first steps toward expanding of our historic district to safeguard our neighborhood's character for generations to come. The section on Speaking Up details other ways we go to bat for Park Slope today - fighting for a people-oriented re-envisioning of the Atlantic Yards Project, for example, or pushing for more livable streets. We also launched the Buy in Brooklyn shop local campaign, to preserve the small stores so crucial to our neighborhood's character.

In the sections on Nurturing Community and Grants  you can read about many of the other things we do to keep Park Slope one of America's great urban communities.  Examples include the Halloween Children's Parade (the largest children's parade in New York City), our bi-annual Civic Sweep and Clean Walk to School Week, and the more than $10,000 in grants we give out each year to neighborhood schools and groups.

We also co-sponsor many of the events that have become landmarks on the neighborhood calendar: the Harvest Festival, Jingle Bell Jamboree and Spring Fling, to name just a few.

All these efforts are entirely volunteer driven, from the grassroots up. If there's a project you'd like to help out on - or a project you'd like to see us take up - contact us today.