If you were about the City Centre today you might have seen a little street reclaiming going on around the place. In a couple of places little groups of people were sitting out in the streets enjoying the sunshine, a privilege that is normally reserved for empty cars.
That”s because it’s PARK(ing) Day, an international day to bring awareness to public open space and the role of roadsides in our cities:
Providing temporary public open space . . . one parking spot at at time.
PARK(ing) Day is a annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places. The project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco. Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with organizations and individuals (operating independently of Rebar but following an established set of guidelines) creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts around the world.
The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat … at least until the meter runs out!
Here are a couple of snaps from my local steet liberation, Upper Queen St. The funny thing is how swamped that group of folks were amongst the enormity of of that roadway. The sad fact is Upper Queen St used to be a very lively functional street with shopping and flats up both sides, but the road frenzy of the mid 20th century saw half the buildings demolished and the street doubled in width to ‘cope’ with the traffic. In these photo’s taken around 9am, you have to wonder quite where all the traffic is! In that second photo all I can see is six empty lanes and a half dozen empty parked cars. So much for progress!
Upper Queen St pop-up cafe
Plenty of room for us humans
And here is one from downtown, the great thing here is the map of Auckland laid out where people can stick on suggestions of what they’d like to see in the city. Most of it was quite predictable, less traffic, less parking, more public transport, more cycling, more public open space. The people are thirsty for great urban environments and sick of a car choked city! Mad props to the Unitec students who put that one together.
PARK(ing) on Shortland St
So great stuff, but why does it only have to be once a year? Can’t we turn some of our streets into parks and squares every day? Well with any luck some of the wonderful concepts outlined in the City Centre Masterplan can go from dream to reality, and we’ll see a pedestrian-tram mall in Queen St, a green linear park along Victoria St, and de-car-ification of the likes of High St and Emily Place.
A Queen St befitting the Queen City?
Victoria St Linear Park?
Emily Place for human use?
Federal St, the new and improved High St on the west?
Also a modest one on Ponsonby Road outside of Landreths Cafe. Say hello to local urbanism avenger Andy Smith from Walk Auckland.
Good on you, folks! Even that little bit of fake “lawn” already makes a nice change.
As an aside, there was a mention of continuing the Northwestern Cycleway along Upper Queen Street up the intersection with K’Road – as well as linking it to the coming Grafton Gully Cycleway (the Northwestern will already be extended across the bridge up to the Canada Street intersection – getting rid of one of those more crazy amazing features of Auckland’s road network: car parking on bridges!). That comment about further extending the cycleway north was just one of the comments made by one designer during the design meetings for Grafton Gully (and was not “in scope”, technically), but it did certainly give the group some ideas on further network links, and reclaiming some more of that wasted space for something else besides cars.
(Oh and my post on Grafton Gully Cycleway is still coming, Patrick, don’t worry
)
The Economist even says ‘driving has lost its mojo’: http://www.economist.com/node/21563280?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/seeing_the_back_of_the_car
Great to see so much activity in Auckland on Park(ing) Day. Very impressed!
Does anyone know if the rogernomics property developers who demanded and got that widening of upper Queen St end up paying for it through increased rates to the council? International experience suggests that the answer will be no.
How much did the pay and display land rental fee add up to? Can’t have been cheap at CBD land values. With the council’s rental increases for outdoor cafe space in Queenstown it would be interesting to see what the opportunity costs are for kerbside parking.
Oh great question Kevyn! No I don’t know but I’d love to know – maybe a good research topic for a masters/Phd thesis? I’ll pitch it to my buddies at the UoA. Especially given the recent experience up here in Kaipara District …
This might be of interest to you then:
http://informedinfrastructure.com/1785/headline-ucla-offers-city-planners-manual-for-creating-parklets-living-streets/
Great job! I guess you can’t get a parking ticket either. Wonder what the by-laws are for occupying a carpark- anyone know? Trespass?
They bought their pay and display tickets!
Parking warden was very friendly- sat and chatted for a while. Was happy that we had a pay and display. We did speculate where he might attempt to stick a ticket, humans not having the obvious equivalent of a windscreen wiper.
Police visited, concerned for our safety, refused a coffee and left. If that was the biggest policing issue of the moment, a good sign for Auckland’s crime situation!
Was a great way to meet people, although many people would barely look our way (no doubt thinking that free coffee meant an agenda to either convert them or sell them something).
Would be cool if by Park(ing) Day next year there is a permanent parklet or two around the city.
A familiar voice quoted in the comments section to that article:
“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.”
-Mayor of Bogota
It is really amazing how few cars are on the street at 9am. 6 lanes, and stupid flush medians- what were we thinking. Great post.
Thought the same thing and was going to ask “is this street always this empty?”
If thats 9am – peak-time – then we can start making changes to it tomorrow.
Exactly. Arm-waving, baby-kissing, ribbon-cutting and apply the paint.
I do live on that street at spend a lot of time observing it across the day. It gets a bit busy at the peak of the peak but 23 1/2 hours a day it is a high speed drag strip for ghost traffic.
A planted median, cycle lanes, wider footpaths, he’ll even more parking would be a better use of that space… I’m happy to see it kept for a dominion Rd Tramway though
Thanks for the props! Unitec Landscape Architecture students – in collaboration with (and funding from) NZILA Auckland Branch champions!
more pics of our park(ing) day site (fully setup) are here https://www.facebook.com/pages/Parking-Day-Auckland-Branch/357680380982144 (excuse the facebook-ness) and a timelapse here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrtjahpdUwo (angle was a bit tight unfortunately)
San Francisco is leading the change…
http://player.vimeo.com/video/40686130?title=0&%3Bbyline=0&%3Bportrait=0&%3Bcolor=9086c0&%3Bjs_api=1&%3Bjs_swf_id=vimeo_player
http://player.vimeo.com/video/40686130?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=9086c0&js_api=1&js_swf_id=vimeo_player