Parking Day is Coming!
Park(ing) Day Bogota (image courtesy deespacio)
Tomorrow cities around the world will celebrate Park(ing) Day . What started in 2005 when San Francisco firm ReBar converted a parking space in San Francisco into a temporary park has exploded into a global event. Last year 975 parks were built in 162 cities in 35 countries, up from 800 parks the year before. This year will be even bigger. To get you excited here are some pictures of our favorite temporary parks from last year. And for those of you who still want to do a last-second park, according to the organizers, doing it without pemits is risky, but not out of the question: ”It’s your call, but we do encourage you to look for creative ways to work with/within the law,” says the Park(ing) Day site. Read More
Quick Clicks> Cul-de-Sack, Talking Transit, Hollywood Project, Park(ing) Police
Courtsey Ian Lockwood
Cul-de-Sacked. Emily Badger of The Atlantic‘s newly launched Atlantic Cities argued that the cul-de-sacs—the suburban answer to the overcrowded urban grids—may be a dead-end in more ways that one. Badger said cul-de-sacs are responsible for our decreased sense of safety, and moreover, happiness.
Talking Transit. Gothamist is right on calling out New York’s MTA as being “really into technology this month.” In a win for the constantly connected and a potential loss for our already-hectic commutes, starting Tuesday, AT&T and T-Mobile subscribers can pull out their cell phones and talk away on underground cell service through the 14th Street corridor. It will take the MTA five years to fully cover the entire New York subway system. Five more years of relative peace-and-quiet.
Paramount Makeover. The LA Times reported that Paramount Pictures is planning a whopping $700-million upgrade to its Hollywood lot, creating nearly 7,300 jobs during construction over next two decades. Rios Clemente Hale Studios and Levin & Associates Architects are charged with improving a place that hasn’t seen much change since the Gary Cooper days without compromising its old Hollywood charm.
Park(ing) police. A Miami-based PARK(ing) Day organizer created a green oasis for the day-long celebration of public space, putting up planters and bringing seats, tables, and WiFi, but according to police, he lingered a little too long. Police arrested the man for taking too long to clean up his parklet the next day, reported Streetsblog.
West Coast Park(ing) Day Diary
Standard's park on Sunset Blvd in LA's Silver Lake neighborhood. (Carren Jao)
What if we could transform part of the massive space we dedicate to urban parking into public parks, and what would it look like? On Friday, over 100 cities worldwide participated in the sixth annual PARK(ing) Day, where citizens and designers temporarily converted metered parking spots into open public space. While we couldn’t jet set around the world, a couple of our reporters checked out the happenings in California, where the concept was born.
Before you check out the parks, we should mention that these grassroots efforts are slowly influencing permanent change. In San Francisco, a City Planning Department collaboration with design firm Rebar, which helped begin PARK(ing) Day, has led to the creation of the “Parklets” program, where parking spots around the city are being converted into permanent plazas and outdoor seating. And on Friday, LA City Council members Jan Perry and Jose Huizar announced a partnership with local neighborhood groups in downtown LA and Eagle Rock to begin a Parklets pilot program in Los Angeles. Read More
Sidewalk Sipping with Sadik-Khan at NYC Pop-Up Cafe
NYC Department of Consumer Affairs Commissioner Jonathan Mintz, the Downtown Alliance's Nicole LaRusso, David Byrne, and Janette Sadik-Khan at the pop-up cafe. (Courtesy NYC DOT)
Sidewalk cafes have long been a popular feature of New York City dining, but many restaurants’ sidewalks are too narrow to set out tables and chairs without violating city code. Offering a solution to this spatial problem, on August 12 the Department of Transportation (DOT) unveiled its first “pop-up cafe” in Lower Manhattan—an 84-foot-long and 6-foot-wide wooden platform with planters, wire railing, 14 cafe tables, and 50 chairs—as the agency’s latest move to reclaim road space for public use. Read More
Park It Here
AN Contributor Alissa Walker enjoys the pocket pasture at Silverlake restaurant Local
Today is Park(ing) Day LA. It’s the third year that the City Of Angels is participating in this transformation of metered parking spots into temporary microcosms of park-like environments — some replete with bench seating, grassy areas, and fresh food off the grill. San Francisco-based art and activist studio, Rebar, created the idea in 2005 as a comment on the lack of quality public spaces as well as to promote social interactions and critical thinking among urbanites. And the meters? Organizers are continually plunking change into the metal coin collectors while the parks occupy the parking spot. Some highlights include: Read More
PARK(ing) Spaces
Always one to take our own advice, AN headed out for a stroll along Sixth Avenue at lunch today to check out a few of the PARK(ing) spaces that had been set up there by enterprising designers.
The first stop was the Yahoo! Purple Bike Park, granted not designed by anyone we know, but it was the closest to the 14th Street 2/3 Station–part of the reason AN is such a fan of PARK(ing) Day is because AN never drives. Because there were no big plots of grass around (more on that later), we failed to find the Yahoo! park on first pass. On to Cook + Fox.
PARK(itects) Day
In the Beginning: It all started with some chairs and a bike rack on Bedford Ave five years ago. Courtesy Transportation Alternatives
On this brisk fall day, why not hit the park for lunch, especially since there’s one closer than you think. Today is the city’s second annual PARK(ing) Day, an event hosted by Transportation Alternatives and the Trust for Public Space where various civic and volunteer groups have taken over parking spaces citywide–if you look at the map, it’s really mostly Manhattan, and Manhattan between Houston and 34th Street at that–and turned them into “parks.”
This year has twice as many parks as last year, at a total of 50. But more than just expanding the size of the project, Transportation Alternatives wanted to test the limits of what these pocket open spaces could be. This led to a partnership with the local AIA chapter and the Center for Architecture, who led an outreach effort to get designers involved.
Advertise on The Architect's Newspaper.
Archives
Categories
Architecture
Design
East Coast
Midwest
National
Planning
Shft+Alt+Del
Sustainability
Transportation
West Coast
