Central Park is the perfect place to take your bike on a nice day. Cental Park has three long-distance routes circling the park. The full loop around the park is 6.1 miles; The upper loop is 5.2 miles; The lower loop is 1.7 miles; You can cross the park at other specially designated locations to shorten the length of your ride

Designed and constructed over a thirty-year period (1865-1895) by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the masterminds behind Central Park, Prospect Park has blossomed into a premiere destination for Brooklyn visitors and residents alike.;

Prospect Park was so revolutionary in its time that many considered the Park a work of art in itself. Others were critical of the idea of building a single, large park in the wealthiest section of Brooklyn rather than several smaller parks at different locations to serve a wider public. The idea of a single, large park won out, and its backers overcame their opponents in Brooklyn politics by having the park built by a state-appointed commission. Olmsted and Vaux engineered the Park to recreate in real space the pastoral, picturesque, and aesthetic ideals expressed in hundreds of paintings. Breaking ground in June, 1866, they created the large Long Meadow out of hilly upland pasture interspersed with peat bogs, they moved and planted trees, hauled topsoil and created a vast unfolding turf with trees placed singly and in groups to approximate the English pastoral style of landscape which had emerged in England in the previous century. Prospect Park's designers had recent precedents in the pastoral style in this country, notably Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston and Green-Wood Cemetery a few blocks away in Brooklyn. By the 1850s and '60s, pastoralism was very popular in landscape design in eastern North America. Both Central and Prospect Parks are considered by some landscape historians to be among the best examples of the type. The designers themselves felt they had greater success in Brooklyn than in New York because the Prospect Park site presented fewer obstacles than the Central Park site, where they had to contend with two reservoirs, a relatively narrow, rectangular site, and a requirement that four city streets cross over the site. The design formula at Prospect Park included elements of both the picturesque and the sublime ideals, the picturesque being represented by the Ravine and its series of pools, waterfalls, and defiles. Although the sublime ideal would be difficult to realize in the gentle Long Island topography, the designers wanted Lookout Hill to be a place of broad views out over Prospect Lake, the farmland beyond, and the bay and ocean in the distance.

The design also created a visual screen consisting of earth forms and trees around the perimeter to heighten the effect of seemingly limitless rural scenery by screening out views of buildings, traffic, and other aspects of the growing city around the park, but the designers did not foresee the high-rise buildings built in the twentieth century. In designing the watercourse Olmsted and Vaux also took advantage of the pre-existing glacier-formed kettle ponds and lowland outwash plains. A winding naturalistic stream channel with several ponds feeds a sixty-acre (24 ha) lake. They crafted the watercourse to include a steep, forested Ravine – perhaps their greatest masterpiece of landscape architecture – all with significant river edge flora and fauna habitats. This was all done to give the urban dweller a "sub-conscious" experience of nature within the city as Olmsted believed it was possible and necessary to provide such nourishment for the general public in the overwhelming urban environments of his time

Jacob Riis Park, also called Jacob A.Riis Park or Jacob Riis State Park, is a seaside park at the southwestern end the Rockaway Peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens. It lies at the foot of the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, adjacent to the east of Fort Tilden, and west of Neponsit and Rockaway Beach. Originally a city-run park under the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, it is currently part of the Jamaica Bay Unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area, and is managed by the National Park Service (NPS).

The forest in what is now Van Cortlandt Park has been around for 17,000 years, since the end of the Wisconsin glaciation. The Wiechquaskeck Lenapes were among the first recorded people to inhabit in the area now referred to as Van Cortlandt Park. They settled in the area around the 14th or 15th centuries. The Lenapes used the geographic features of the area to support their community; for instance, they used the Tibbetts Brook, Spuyten Duyvil Creek, or Hudson River for fishing, and flatland areas for farming. They formed a village named Keskeskick, whose name roughly translates to "sharp grass or sedge marsh" in the Unami language.

LaTourette Park, like much of the surrounding area, was once the farm property of David (1786-1864) and Ann (1794-1862) LaTourette. The LaTourettes first established their farm in 1830. Over time the farm became one of the top producing family-run farms on Staten Island, renowned for its superb produce. In 1928, the LaTourette family sold their farm to the City of New York. The site was transferred to Parks in 1955 and was designated a New York City Landmark in 1973. Although the original farmhouse was demolished, the LaTourette’s 1870 mansion is now used as a club house for the park’s golf course. In 1982, the mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places.