Park(ing) Day 2012
To put it mildly, I’ve been busy. But what this means is that I have been participating in many very interesting events in New York. This city is full of them - even if that means a simple walk down the street.
No doubt you have seen or heard about this San Fransisco based day of street reclamation and this year I was finally able to participate. Park(ing) Day seeks to demonstrate exactly how much space is devoted to cars typically through transforming a parking space into a public space.
Park(ing) Day began in 2005 when Rebar redesigned a metered parking space into a public park, kicking off the international conversation about who exactly the streets are for; be it cars, pedestrians, bicycles, skateboards, wheelchairs or dog sleds. And how large is a typical parking space? Bigger than you realize - in North America a parallel parking space is usually at least twenty feet long and nine feet wide. That’s quite a bit of storage space for a big hunk of metal in my opinion.
Some classmates and I set up our Park(ing) Day space on Lexington and 68th street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan where there is little public space or seating. We made benches from repurposed shipping pallets and invited passers by to write down what they wish there was more (or less) of in the neighborhood. We also had a huge bag of found objects that doubled as a fantasy planning charrette. Many people stopped to ask us what we were doing and participated. I met a few really interesting people and had a great time. Even the blog Inhabitat stopped by and added us to their Park(ing) Day 2012 story.
