Fol­low­ing Auck­land’s lead, Welling­ton has opened Low­er Cuba Street as a shared space. There was­n’t much cel­e­bra­tion or fan­fare beyond an arti­cle in the Domin­ion Post about let­ting cars back in. Tech­ni­cal­ly, I’m not sure if the “shared space” has been offi­cial­ly opened, and I’m not real­ly in the mood for cel­e­brat­ing.

The idea of devel­op­ing Low­er Cuba Street as a shared space was a reac­tion to pub­lic dis­ap­proval of chang­ing the sta­tus of Man­ners Mall from a pedes­tri­an mall to a bus route. A report to WCC Strat­e­gy and Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee (PDF) high­light­ed that res­i­dents were upset at the loss of pedes­tri­an space. An amend­ed pro­pos­al was put for­ward and sub­se­quent­ly passed. The ini­tial images looked encour­ag­ing. These were tak­en from the amend­ed pro­pos­al:Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the final design looks strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent. Coun­cil­lors vot­ed to include 20 car parks in the design, giv­ing us this:

While it boasts wide foot­paths and trees, I chal­lenge any­one to point to the shared part of the shared space. Car parks are 2h pay-and-dis­play parks, which does­n’t lend itself to shar­ing — except with oth­er cars, and the road down the mid­dle looks as unfriend­ly as any oth­er. At least the signs say “please” when ask­ing dri­vers not to run over pedes­tri­ans. I reg­u­lar­ly walk up and down Cuba Street, swing­ing back and forth between anger and sad­ness for what we’ve been giv­en as com­pen­sa­tion for lost pedes­tri­an space. Hon­est­ly, Low­er Cuba St bears more resem­blance to Blair Street and Allen Street than to any of Auck­land’s new shared spaces.

Park(ing) Day first start­ed in 2005 and aims to encour­age think­ing about urban spaces. The sim­ple idea is to take a car park, pay for it and turn it into a park for peo­ple to enjoy. The first exam­ple was a 2h park in San Fran­cis­co. As word spread around, Rebar released the project to the pub­lic. The 2010 event host­ed 850 parks in 30 coun­tries and the idea is still spread­ing. Park(ing) Low­er Cuba Street seems to be a per­fect way to raise the issue to the pub­lic and to city coun­cil. The design fails to pro­vide a shared space; by tak­ing park­ing spaces and forc­ing them to be shared, we can illus­trate how poor­ly the design fits the orig­i­nal stat­ed goal.

So this post is a call to arms. We want you to be involved. We want your lawn chairs and your pot plants, we want your cof­fees and your books. We want peo­ple to share spaces with peo­ple. There are 18 park­ing spaces avail­able for gen­er­al use, each of which is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be some­thing more than it is. Park(ing) Day 2011 is Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 16. If you have some time and want to come along, help out or buy an hour on a park­ing meter, leave a com­ment below.

Since my orig­i­nal off-hand­ed tweet that start­ed this whole thing, I’ve received offers of assis­tance and a fair bit of encour­age­ment. Armed with the day off from work and some fold­ing chairs, I’m look­ing to retake some space and have cof­fee with any Welling­ton City or Greater Welling­ton coun­cil­lors who care to stop by for a friend­ly chat.