Atlanta will once again be participating in PARK(ing) Day, a “global, public, participatory art project” that sees car parking spots transformed temporarily into themed parklets, to bring attention to the amount of valuable space lost to car storage in cities. Founded in 2005 by San Francisco-based art and design firm REBAR, what started as a subversive “tactical urbanism” installation has become an annual event in dozens of cities across the world, often hosted by the cities themselves.
The Atlanta celebration will be hosted by Livable Buckhead on Friday, September 17th from 11a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Lenox Square parking lot. The lot will be transformed into a patchwork of temporary mini-parks created by over two dozen local businesses and organizations, and connected via a tree-lined, curving pathway. This year’s theme is “Where We Play” and will feature installations such as a Zen garden, mural painting, a flower wall, Spin e-scooter safety training, e-bike demonstrations and a mini-putt putt green. The parklets will be complemented by a cadre of food trucks during the celebration.
In most cities, PARK(ing) Day takes place throughout the city or a certain district, where participants are given permission (or not) to build a temporary parklet in street parking spaces, a practice which intends to disrupt expectations of how street space can be allocated in dense urban areas. Prominent urbanists and planners such as Donald Shoup have much lamented the “high cost of free parking” in cities, where high parking minimums in zoning codes have deteriorated the urban fabric while contributing to higher housing and transportation costs.
Hosting PARK(ing) Day in a surface parking lot may not be as disruptive as installing parklet on a city street, but it certainly allows the organizers to achieve a more cohesive vision for the day. Organizers describe the event as a “wooded wonderland” that is “one of the Southeast’s largest PARK(ing) Day celebrations.” Each participating group will be given one standard-sized parking space with which to create their parklet, where they can celebrate their chosen theme and compete for the best parklet award. Landscape Architecture firm HGOR has taken home the top prize for the past two years.
Groups interested in participating may still register for $50 for a non-profit or $200 for a company at Livable Buckhead’s event website. The organizers have adopted a COVID policy which includes encouraging mask use, free masks, sanitization stations, enhanced physical distancing and an open pedestrian traffic flow plan.
