Park(ing) for People

Park(ing) Day is com­ing around again and this time there’s some offi­cial sup­port. Wel­ling­ton Sculp­ture Trust is call­ing for expres­sions of interest to join them on the day. The clos­ing date is August 12th (sorry for the late post­ing on this), so get those idea machines cook­ing. There are a total of 20 loc­a­tions that will be set aside spe­cific­ally for this, as far north as the Rail­way Sta­tion and dotting down to Swan Lane on Cuba Street. My pre­vi­ous loc­a­tion at Lower Cuba picks up 6 spaces and may actu­ally look a bit like a prop­er shared space when it’s all set up.

There is a fair bit of inform­a­tion to read through (PDF) before sub­mit­ting a concept. Some costs can be recovered, but there are rules to fol­low and an oblig­a­tion to have the park in place from 8am until 8pm regard­less of weath­er.

Why would you want to do this? Besides being a fun day out, it’s a great way to get people think­ing about pub­lic spaces and how we inter­act with the street. On-street park­ing is a sac­red cow (Coun­cil­lor Mor­ris­on, you aren’t help­ing) and we need to have the dis­cus­sion about how park­ing affects urb­an form and the people on the streets, which is sort of what Coun­cil­lor Paul Eagle is say­ing, even if what he means is slightly dif­fer­ent. Streets are all about inter­ac­tions and we need to move bey­ond our zero-sum-game men­tal­ity. Cre­at­ive use of one car park can bring much more value than just a few car­loads of people.

Know­ing that Park(ing) Day has its roots in the fringes of leg­al­ity, it feels weird to see it wrapped in offi­cial­dom and sup­por­ted by Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil. Hav­ing parks vet­ted and selec­ted seems a bit san­it­ised. How­ever, we need to get people to take interest in reshap­ing Wel­ling­ton for the future. 20 well-designed parks in high ped­es­tri­an areas will be much more effect­ive than a single sub­vers­ive park, regard­less of polit­ic­al wash­ing.

Of course, noth­ing is stop­ping any­one from tak­ing some oth­er space in a less offi­cial fash­ion. Just be safe about it.