For the past six years, on September 16th, advocates, planners, bureaucrats and artists have joined forces to create mini pop-up parks in curbside spaces, generally reserved for cars. All this is part of a global movement called “Park(ing) Day” which uses these fun new public spaces to call attention to what is ordinarily a touchy subject for cities. Parking, how much to have and what to charge for it is right up there as a third rail issue for city and transportation officials.
Park(ing) Day showcases the myriad of alternate uses for curbside spaces and open lots, and creates a public dialogue about how we use this space, and what we should fairly charge for it.
At Common Ground, we're grateful to have added the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) as a client this year. We've now worked with them in seven countries and have seen the powerful impact of their important work.
Skip to the complete list of locations where ITDP has assisted with Park(ing) Day activities or download the press release about ITDP’s Park(ing) Day activities
It is clear that parking policy, if it exists at all, is currently an afterthought rather than central to a long-term congestion mitigation and air quality. This makes parking unreliable for motorists and inefficient for cities. Motorists circle endlessly to find an available spot at the curb. Retail employees park in front of their stores for the entire day, taking choice parking locations away from potential customers. Developers are compelled to provide more parking than the market requires, which hurts their bottom line. And traffic managers encounter difficulty handling traffic generated by new parking as there is often no link between parking price, supply and the amount of available road space.
In cities in the developing world the issues are complicated further by governments’ failure to crack down on bad parking behaviors including illegal parking, especially on sidewalks, or illegal valet operations.
At the end of the day, we all pay, as hidden subsidies on parking encourage over reliance on private car use—a major, growing contributor to global warming and air pollution.
Many cities try to build their way out of the problem, thinking the solution is just a few more spaces away. But the issue is not lack of supply; it’s lack of appropriate management and enforcement.
