About Park(ing) Day NYC
Park(ing) Day Redux
At 12pm on October 18th, Park(ing) Day REDUX debuted on 21st Street, in front of the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center. Selected 2008 Park(ing) Spots were re-installed on the closed street, along with art and video from the 2008 event. Hosted in partnership with the great folks at Eyebeam, REDUX was an opportunity to see some of the best parts of Park(ing) Day NYC in one place.
The Idea
Park(ing) Day is an international event that reclaims over 200 parking spots in 50 cities around the world and transforms them into engaging, people-friendly public spaces for one day a year.
Park(ing) Day NYC is an effort of the New York City Streets Renaissance which supports the conversion of parking spots throughout New York City's 5 boroughs into human-friendly places for a single day. These small, temporary public spaces provide a breath of relief from the auto-clogged reality of New York City, and aim to spark dialogue about our valuable public space and how we choose to use it.
The History
On October 29th, 2005, Transportation Alternatives took over a parking spot on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Using basic materials, they created their first "parking spot squat", offering free bike parking and a place to sit and talk to friends and strangers alike. It was an immediate success, drawing crowds and attention from the press. Most importantly, it got people thinking about whether $.50 an hour was a fair price for such a useful piece of public space, and whether that space should be occupied by cars at all.
As it turned out, people on the West Coast were wondering the same thing. A few weeks after the Brooklyn squat, the San Francisco-based arts collective REBAR launched PARK(ing) Day as a national event in which people in cities all over the country reclaim parking spots as vibrant, public spaces for one day. In the years since its debut, the annual event has expanded globally and is now celebrated in 50 cities.
In 2007 Transportation Alternatives (T.A.), in partnership with the Trust for Public Land, launched Park(ing) Day NYC, bringing the internationally successful public space intervention to New York. It featured 25 high-visibility parking spots, located throughout New York City. Each space was individually organized and executed by partners and allies that included elected officials, artists, architects and planners, advocates and engaged citizens (check out the great Streetfilm about the 2007 event, or visit the Park(ing) Day project on LivableStreets for more details).
In 2008, Park(ing) Day NYC doubled the number of Park(ing) spots to 57! Park builders placed special emphasis on site-specific designs that reflected the social, cultural and architectural contexts in which they were situated, as well as generated innovative proof-of-concept designs for permanent public space reclamation. Seating areas, art installations, and community engagement made the case for a more sensible and human-friendly distribution of available urban public space.
Park(ing) Day 2009 will continue to support the reclamation of public space throughout the city and will host a Pre-Fab Park(ing) Spot Design Competition.
The People
Transportation Alternatives (T.A.) is a non-profit organization working to reclaim New York City's Streets from the automobile, and to advocate for cycling, walking, and mass transit as the most sensible alternatives to automobile dependency. Founded in 1973 during the explosion of environmental consciousness that also produced the Clean Air and Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, T.A. has grown into a membership-based organization with over 7,000 members in the New York metro area and beyond. It has helped win numerous improvements for cyclists and pedestrians and has been the leading voice for reducing car use in the city. In addition to its advocacy work, T.A. produces a number of popular annual events, including the New York City Century, and the Tour de Brooklyn, Tour de Queens, and Tour de Bronx bicycle rides.
The Open Planning Project (TOPP) is a non-profit incubator for projects and technology to catalyze large scale social change. TOPP identifies opportunities where great improvements to the world can be brought about by small, focused, concerted action. TOPP's expertise in software development gives it the ability to leverage information technology to help solve these problems. TOPP also works closely with other advocacy groups and government to build collaborative solutions for these societal issues.
Founded in 1997, Eyebeam is an art and technology center that provides a fertile context and state-of-the-art tools for digital experimentation. It is a lively incubator of creativity and thought, where artists and technologists actively engage with the larger culture, addressing the issues and concerns of our time. Eyebeam challenges convention, celebrates the hack, educates the next generation, encourages collaboration, freely offers its output to the community, and invites the public to share in a spirit of openness: open source, open content and open distribution.
The Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit organization that conserves land for people to enjoy as parks, community gardens, historic sites, rural lands, and other natural places, is a sponsor of National Park(ing) Day. To date, TPL has protected more than 2.5 million acres of land nationwide. In New York City, TPL has helped create, expand, and steward more than 290 parks, gardens, and natural areas. The permanent protection of more than 620 acres and the design, construction, and stewardship of these NYC sites is valued at more than $200 million.
Design Competition
This year Park(ing) Day will host an open design competition to create Park(ing) Spot prototypes: portable, affordable units produced from readily available materials which will provide physical delineation for the reclamation of a single curbside parking space. Prototypes will be required to interact visually and thematically with the NYC street environment, and to support the creation of small usable public spaces.
As a test of their viability, competition entries will be installed on NYC streets on Park(ing) Day 2009 (Friday, Sep. 18th). Jury members will then conduct a tour of the entries, before convening to choose the winners.
Winners of the competition will be honored at an event held shortly after Park(ing) Day 2009. The winning entrant will have the opportunity to collaborate with T.A. to put their design into limited-run production, with units to be sold via the T.A. website.
Ultimately, the sale of the winner's design will have the effect of transforming Park(ing) Day NYC from a once-a-year act of reclamation to an everyday statement, allowing livable streets advocates to simply and beautifully create a space for public life on their own block, in their own time.
More details on how to apply to the competition are coming soon! Please sign up for our e-newsletter and check back on the site regularly for updates.
