What Would You Put in Your Park?
September 14, 2016
What would you do with your own plot of land?
Pretend you had that – 170 square feet, a plot the size of a parking space, on a city block. Would you create a mini dog park? Would you build a playground for kids? Would you make it a safe zone in which to relax and lay back on your lunch break?
We’re about to turn ideas into reality.
Here at ISEPTAPHILLY, we love Parking Day and its shared interest with our common goal: getting more cars off of the road. It’s numbers. It’s factual. Less cars in our city means more places to do things that are important to us. More room to kick a ball, walk a dog, recline in a chair, share a cup of coffee.
ISEPTAPHILLY's 2013 Parklet
Every free inch of non-restricted curb currently harbors a car, which is always larger than the human it harbors. The average car contains 1.6 people. Now, we all can see that’s just not spatially effective! For comparison, a Broad Street Line car (a single car) holds 65 people. One Broad Street Line car alone takes 41 cars off of the road. So, imagine one Broad Street Line train, imagine the Norristown High Speed Line, imagine Regional Rail trains connecting to the suburbs, Trolleys and Buses that snake to the far (and winding) reaches of our cities.
Image thanks to Cycling Promotion Fund
Imagine the kind of space we could save if those in personal cars took public transportation instead…
Image thanks to Tumblr: peterfromtexas
Not to mention, APTA “released a study this week that reveals a 90 percent drop in safety risks for those who commute using public transportation rather than driving, (Kyra Senese, 2016).”
This Friday, 9/16, is Philadelphia Parking Day. Once again, activists, architects, interested parties and people like yourself have the chance to showcase what kind of public park they would make with a transformed parking space. We’ve seen almost 300 of these over the past eight years of Parking Day, and can’t wait to see what ideas flourish in this year’s plots. In the past, the parks have ranged from mini-mini golf courses, meeting areas, landscape rest zones, public displays of art, and some more experimental installations.
This year, over 50 of these “parklets” are expected between 8a-5p, transforming our city’s urban spaces into green, sustainable, welcoming spots.
Yours truly, the ISEPTAPHILLY spot, will be enjoying the sunshine on 16th and JFK. We’ll be sharing [just one of] our vision[s]: improved transit waiting areas, made possible by increased ridership (which translates into increased revenue and funding)!
We’ll also be asking you for your SEPTA ideas. Tell us what you would change or recommend that would positively impact service and ridership today. If you enter your idea on our contest page, you’ll be entered to win an October Anywhere TrailPass.
So please, come by, check out our space, and share with us your ideas, your vision.
What would you do with your public park?
