Warren Karlenzig

SF urban parklets a success

President of Common Current / Fellow at the Post-Carbon Institute, Oct 04, 11.

Tagged with urbanism, parks, parking, bike, walk

San Francisco’s parklets are a vibrant testimony to the city’s Pavement to Parks Program, managed by a non-profit, the Great Streets Program. The city’s 15 parklets all started with two to three parking spaces, or other poorly-utilized urban space (the city says 25% of its space is taken up by streets or auto rights of way, while only 20% of the city is parkland—still one of the highest totals in the nation). With the help of architects, artists and landscapers, the asphalt is converted into living, breathing social settings.

The parklets do continue to provide parking space for the non-polluting form of transit: bicycles. I took a cycling tour this weekend of the city’s parklets, which offer cyclists a safe and convenient place to park their two wheels and take a rest with their steed.

In the Valencia parklet, which included edgy canopy steel structures, I counted 19 people hanging out, and 31 bicycles parked. The space was much livelier, more functional and attractive than any three cars could have ever been in the same space.

Full Story: Urban Parklets: The New Front Stoop
Source: The Common Current, September 18, 2011
Via: Planetizen

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