Sarah Kuck, 1 Mar 10

In San Francisco, a handful of parking spaces and public right-of-ways are being remade into mini parks and plazas. Some are lined with trees sprouting from old dumpsters, others are buffered from traffic with large, discarded pipes; inside the improvised borders, tables, small patches of grass and concrete slabs are arranged for seating.

These 'parklets' and plazas are part of San Francisco's new Pavement to Parks initiative, an attempt to transfer some of San Francisco's public space back to pedestrians.

Mayor Gavin Newsom's greening director Astrid Haryati recently told the San Francisco Chronicle, nearly 25 percent of San Francisco's surface is pavement. The Pavement to Parks program aims to change how much of that area is devoted to cars.

This is a fascinating development in the evolution of thought around city streets and who gets to use them. In 2009, New York City took on a similar (yet larger) project -- transforming Broadway to be far more pedestrian friendly:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said the temporary project has been so successful, he plans to make it permanent. The smaller-scale parks in San Francisco are also temporary, but could be made permanent if the community responds positively to them.

Transforming parking spots into parks is an idea that was born in San Francisco with the art group Rebar. Their annual Park(ing) Day Celebration takes over parking spots and turns them into parks for a day, asking passersby to think about how much space we give to cars. This event is celebrated each fall around the world.

As we continue to make cars less important to our society, what will we do with all the space?

Image credits: Urbanist, Flickr, NYC Department of Transportation

2010-03-04