Parking Day Movement
Description
"Why is there so much space in our cities for vehicles and so little for public gathering? How might we redesign our urban spaces to make them more convivial and humane?
This concept — a park in a parking spot — was the brainchild of Rebar, a design studio working at the intersections of art and activism. It became the initial spark for PARK(ing) Day, a worldwide movement to challenge and repurpose urban space by temporarily transforming metered parking spaces into public parks. The first PARK was erected in downtown San Francisco in October 2005. Rebar filled the meter with coins and thus effectively rented a seven by twenty-two foot curbside parking space in downtown San Francisco. They rolled out sod, added a potted tree, put out a bench, and created a temporary park for several hours.
The PARK capitalized on San Francisco’s legal code, which did not specifically state that parking spaces be limited to use by private vehicles. Co-organizer Blaine Merker described this performance installation as a “creative repurposing of familiar elements to produce new meaning,” using principles such as creative adaptation, absurdity, innovation, and beautification to change the way we think about metered parking spots and urban space more generally.[1] No longer just places to park automobiles, PARK(ing) spots become rentable public spaces, “temporarily expanding the public realm and improving the quality of urban human habitat, at least until the meter ran out,” as Rebar’s website put it.
Following the initial installation, a picture of the PARK in San Francisco was quickly disseminated through various electronic media. It became what’s known as a “sticky” idea (see The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath). After seeing the circulated image, people from all over the world contacted Rebar to find out how to stage a similar event. In response, Rebar chose the third Friday in September as “PARK(ing) Day” and, starting the following year, encouraged people to make their own playful and transformative PARK(ing) performances. PARK(ing) Day adopted a creative commons license and encouraged an open source ethic, so long as participants limited their events to the specified day and followed a few simple guidelines. PARK(ing) Day has thus become an international movement reaching hundreds of cities across the world. The initial PARK has become a meme that can be adapted to local situations, and used to raise awareness about a variety of issues facing urban residents.
The PARK(ing) Day movement has also resulted in more permanent changes in urban space. Several cities have created permitting processes for the creation of enduring “parklets.” For example, a parklet on 9th Avenue between Irving and Judah Streets in San Francisco’s inner sunset neighborhood provides several benches so passersby and patrons of nearby bakeries and shops can stop, take a rest, and question how we use urban space." (http://beautifultrouble.org/case/parking-day/)