While each source agency classifies its facilities according to their own naming systems, we have grouped all facilities and program sites into the following seven categories to help planners navigate the data more easily:

• Health and Human Services

• Education, Child Welfare, and Youth

• Parks, Gardens, and Historical Sites

• Libraries and Cultural Programs

• Public Safety, Emergency Services, and Administration of Justice

• Core Infrastructure and Transportation

• Administration of Government

Within each of these domains, each record is further categorized into a set of facility groups, subgroups, and types that are intended to make the data easy to navigate and more useful for specific planning purposes. Facility types and names appear as they do in source datasets, wherever possible. A full listing of the facility categories is provided here.

If you have any questions or comments about these data please contact DCPOpenData@planning.nyc.gov.

Common uses:

Fair Share Analysis, Neighborhood studies, Facilities planning

Watch-outs:

Analysis Limitations. As a result of the data limitations and inconsistencies listed below users should be careful in their use of this database so as to avoid developing suspect analyses. For example, a comparison of the density or accessibility of facilities across neighborhoods should recognize that some of the facilities included are organizational headquarters rather than service sites and that this database is not authoritatively comprehensive. In addition, we rely on source data from other agencies to populate the database, and some of these sources may fall out-of-date. Users can find the date of each source dataset’s latest update in the source data dictionary.

Missing Records: Currently, FacDB is the most comprehensive spatial data resource available for facilities run by public and non-public entities in NYC, but it does not claim to capture every facility within the specified domains. Some facilities are deliberately excluded from the data that source agencies provide in order to protect the safety and privacy of their clients. Also, many records could not be geocoded. To learn more about how the data are processed, please review the Data Sources and Compilation Process.

Duplicates: Please be aware that this dataset may include cases of duplicate records for the same facility because several source datasets have content that overlap.

Administrative Addresses: There are known to be cases when the address provided in the source data is for a headquarters office rather than the facility site location. Unfortunately, these could not be systematically verified. For more detailed information on a specific facility reach out to the respective oversight agency.

Public Accessibility of Sites: DCP is unable to verify the public accessibility of all sites. For example, some playgrounds or playing fields may only be accessible to participants in certain programs.