We Live in a Concrete Jungle
Our generation is an urban one. By 2025, an estimated 27 million “megacities” (ones with 10 million+ inhabitants) will exist throughout the world and the rate of urban migration and development shows no signs of slowing down. In America alone, about 26% of people are city dwellers and the surrounding suburbs host an additional another whopping 53% of the nation’s population. Most of us never set foot on “natural” ground during our daily routines and that is a striking contrast to even 30 years ago.
New York’s Green Island. Source: traveler corner
And this poses a unique problem for us who live in cramped apartments with views obstructed by highrises - how to we maintain a relationship with nature around us? Even in a place like New York City where we can point to places like Central Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens on our maps, setting foot on grass seems to be a planned privilege rather than a natural occurrence.
Well, it seems a few designers wanted to change this.
Reclaiming our Streets
PARKLETS are, on the most basic level, an extension of the sidewalk into the street. They typically occupy a parking space or some percentage of a parking lane and aim to provide human-scale amenities that are difficult to find in a busy metropolis. The first parklet is credited to designer Suzi Bolognese in San Francisco in 2010 and has quickly spread to cities all over North America. They’ve become the posterchild of “Parking Day,” a worldwide event held on the third Friday of every September.
Creatively, parklets are one of the most powerful ways for designers to intervene in street life. We’re able to highlight and provide public amenities that are very inaccessible to various degrees in different cities without the purchase of a Starbucks Venti Strawberry Mocha Frappuccino - outdoor electrical outlets, bike racks, public tables, and areas to simply rest your feet.
WMB Studio Blazes a Trail in the UK. Source: Dezeen
San Francisco and the Bay Area has been the perfect climate for these projects to germinate but ‘seasonal parklets’ have begun to pop up even in harsher climates such as the American Northeast. Strategies of installment and use have diversified for many places in the world. London even got its first in the summer of 2015.
Potential Win Wins
First off, having a regulated and precedented small-scale design program is a huge opportunity for young architects. As a project they are cheaper, more manageable, exist on a shorter timeline, and don’t necessarily require external expertise or diverse resources. We are especially benefited by the fact that this design form is uniquely public and accessible without supporting media.
BASE Landscape Studio
Second, it’s very beneficial to the client and serves more purpose than is immediately interpreted. Stakeholders tend to be more and more store and restaurant owners who would rather have a unique design in the place of the static and unattractive parking rectangle. More incidental foot traffic means more publicity, more consumption.
A Proposal for a Mobile Parklet in San Francisco. Source: KPBS
The Exploratorium's Visitor Parklet in SF
Thirdly, it provides a way for smaller and tight-knit cities/communities to act on and learn more about environmental impact. For this reason, local city governments have fully supported the initiative as something that is immediately impactful, tangible, and used as a nexus of discussion and efforts.
Proudly Showcased on the City of Oakland’s Website
Finally, what do you think? I haven’t yet gone into a heavier critique of the design form but I first wanted to present the ‘elevator pitch’ of what these buggers are and how they could potentially do good for your community. Next week I’ll go into a parklet project that I had the great joy of working on with students in Boston.