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.