Jackson residents and city officials gathered on Oct. 5, 2026, to open Farish Street Green and Urban Forest, a new public space in the city’s historic Farish Street district. The project turned three vacant lots into a place with trees, picnic tables, a trellis and a stage. The opening marked a visible milestone in a community effort that began with questions about where summer heat gathers and how neighbors wanted the area to change.
The Jackson Association of Neighborhoods listed a 10 a.m. grand opening hosted by 2°C Mississippi and Communities of Shalom. The event listing promised remarks, a ribbon cutting and refreshments and said all were welcome. Mississippi Today and WLBT reported from the opening, where residents, organizers and city officials gathered around a green space designed for shade and outdoor use.
The design has both a planted park and an urban-forest area. WLBT reported that 2°C Mississippi led the planting of about 100 trees. A wooden trellis surrounds the park, with a concrete stage and picnic tables inside; across the street, rows of trees fill the forest area. Those features give the neighborhood a new place to sit and gather while the trees grow.
The project grew out of heat-mapping work. 2°C Mississippi says it worked with the City of Jackson in 2020 on community science that mapped heat across the city. Volunteers from Jackson State University, the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Jackson neighborhoods helped collect data. The results guided attention to Farish Street, where organizers saw a need for more trees and green infrastructure.
Mississippi Today reported that some downtown areas measured more than 10 degrees hotter during summer than parts of the city’s outskirts. The purpose of the new green space is to add trees, plants and shade in an area affected by the urban heat-island effect. The opening itself does not establish how much the new plantings will change temperatures; that is a question the project’s ongoing measurements are intended to examine.
Neighborhood input shaped the layout. The project’s organizers say residents and business owners took part in meetings and workshops over 18 months to consider how the green infrastructure should look, how people might use it and how it could be maintained. In a WLBT interview, Jackson Redevelopment Authority CEO Alex Lawson said people who lived and worked along the street took part in years of meetings and helped decide where trees would be placed.
The collaboration also included asking people how heat affects outdoor life. 2°C Mississippi says volunteers gathered responses during Farish Street community events, including Juneteenth and the Farish Fashion Forward event. The surveys asked about heat, trees and outdoor activities. That input gave the project more than a map of hot spots: it offered a way for residents to describe what they wanted from the public space taking shape around them.
Dorothy Davis, a Farish Street native and leader of Communities of Shalom, helped with heat measurements and the project’s development. She told WLBT she was moved to see the work reach its opening. Davis also described volunteer temperature readings that she said had changed over the course of the effort. Those observations are her account, not a controlled finding that the new trees caused a specific temperature drop.
Monitoring will continue. WLBT reported that organizers plan to keep measuring heat over the next several years and compare conditions with and without trees and plants. 2°C Mississippi’s project page describes a longer study that tracks heat, wind and humidity. The data may help guide later green-space work in Jackson, but the park’s measured effect is still something the partners intend to evaluate rather than claim as settled.
Farish Street Green is also part of a neighborhood with a long civic and cultural life. The project page notes that people continue to gather there for events such as Juneteenth, First Fridays and Farish Forward. Mississippi Today described the district as a historic center of Black-owned businesses. The new space adds trees and a gathering area to a place where residents already come together.
For neighbors who helped shape the plans, the opening brings a shared design into public view. Its trees will take time to mature, and the heat study is still underway. For now, the community has a new place to meet outdoors, built from local participation and a practical effort to understand the street’s heat before deciding what might help.
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