Happy PARK(ing) Day!

This year, on September 15, 2017, members of Kittelson’s Anchorage team – Wende Wilber, Ly Nguyen and Andrew Ooms – celebrated PARK(ing) Day, a day each year when metered parking spaces in urban areas around the world are re-imagined into community spaces where all are welcome.

PARK(ing) Day invites citizens, artists and activists to transform metered parking spaces into temporary public places. The project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco. Since then, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with organizations and individuals (operating independently of Rebar but following an established set of guidelines) creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts around the world. PARK(ing) Day occurs each year on the third Friday in September.

The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat – at least until the meter runs out!