If you’ve got a hankering to party in the street, and you don’t mind being limited to a really small space — say, a space the size of a parking spot — then Seattle’s PARK(ing) Day is for you. Parking Day, which will take place on September 15 from 9am to 7pm, is a chance for residents to create their own pop-up parks.
As per the Seattle PARK(ing) Day website:
PARK(ing) Day happens once a year in September and is an opportunity for Seattleites to rethink how streets can be used. Seattle has participated in this international event since 2007 and has given people the opportunity to temporarily turn on-street parking spots into public spaces. The program is intended to encourage creative placemaking, particularly in places where access to parks is limited, as well as raise awareness about the importance of walkable, livable, and healthy communities.
But don’t just throw down your parklet on September 15. You’ll need to apply first. The application here is due by August 18.
Some city funds are available from the Neighborhood Matching Fund to help construct your park as we wrote about back in February. (You can still apply by August 7, but you better write fast.) If you managed to score some of this loot, then I’ll be by to enjoy your posh park. But if not, don’t let that stop you from PARK(ing). I’m sure you can scare up a few free couches off the streets in our neighborhood, and who hasn’t got a roll of Astroturf sitting in their basement?
In my opinion, that is the last thing we need in this neighborhood. We can purchase zone 22 parking if we choose. Molly Moon’s parklet seemed to appear overnight. It takes up two valuable parking places, in our area which our small local businesses desperately need those place for customers. It is a complete wast of space, reeks of privilege,and is a nice place for drug deals later at night. Comfortable seating, and all. I realize I am in a big minority of one or two on this topic. It happens.
Yet, somehow, the small business that it is in front of both requested the parklet, and seems to be doing thriving business. The reason? The people who go to Molly Moon’s don’t drive (rather, they walk/bike/bus) or, if they do drive, they have no problem being expected to walk a bit for that privilege.
Remember that even if the hypothetical two cars were in those parking spots and were hypothetically packed to the brim, we’re talking about 10 people when Molly Moon’s line often stretches out to the street corner. I highly doubt the parked cars we see on 45th were actually packed to the brim – my wife and I play a game when we’re waiting for a bus, and count the number of cars that actually have a passenger. Turns out there’s not that many.
Sure, an ice cream place isn’t as dependent on parking – and the parking in front of their place isn’t theirs anyway, a customer of anyone else’s could park there. But once they seize it for outdoor seating, it’s pretty much all theirs – practically. if not technically. Appropriation of a common resource, great deal for them I’m sure.
Molly Moon made the space public seating (open to anyone), while before it was only available to people who had made a many-thousand-dollar investment in a private vehicle, despite the fact that local streets are paid for by everyone, even those without vehicles. Which is the real appropriation?
Parking on that stretch of N 45th is a common resource for businesses there. Technically now “open to anyone”, but practically, it’s outdoor seating for the ice cream place; important common resource gone.
It’s a good deal for pedestrians in general also, since it makes the lingering crowd in front the store more negotiable. It’s also a good deal for business around it. Similar to how malls specifically seek out tenants like Ding Tai Fung, a business that attracts crowds would boost business around it. Molly Moon made Wallingford a destination.
How many years has it been?–and still every mention of Molly Moon’s or parks re-ignites the mourning for those two entire parking spaces. Apparently the neighborhood went to heck after those spaces were lost–no new businesses open, no one wants to live here, plummeting property values. How did we not notice the doom brought by that cute parklet?
I hope parlets and other uses of public land in the neighbourhood will be a permanent thing. The public space in our neighbourhood is precious. So much of it shouldn’t be used to provide free parking for private cars that almost all the time sit unused. Our residental streets could be great little parks with children playing and adults mingling if we replaced onstreet parking on one side of with people frendly spaces.
We have an abundance of parking on and around 45th. Wallingford Center, Chase and other parking lots are almost empty. Green spaces and spaces where people can mingle will make much friendly main street. This will encourage the foot trafic which our business badly need. Merging the sidewalls, planting strip and trafic lanes in a more seamless way with more planting and funiture to create meanderings trafic lanes would slow car speeds 45th and make it a safer space for all.
If that abundance of surface parking could be made available for the purpose of visiting local businesses in general, that would to some extent make up for loss of street parking. That isn’t the case now, though, as those lots are reserved for the use of Wallingford Center, Chase etc., and I think we can assume they will stay that way for the foreseeable future. As iowagirl points out, street parking is a vital necessity for smaller local businesses.
A “park” laid out on top of the asphalt in a parking space in front of an eatery’s storefront makes a mockery of our unmet open space needs.
A good example of that mockery is one of SDOT’s recent “Pavement to Parks” projects at NE 65th Street and Weedin place by BS Stop Espresso. Why anyone would believe people would just hang out on painted asphalt like that is beyond me. But then again, this is Scott kubly SDOT for ya.
People would start hanging out at places like that only when the density is high, like in South Lake Union at noon. At this moment, I don’t think that place would be utilized unless the city let the coffee shop put seating there.
I agree. Hey, look at that!
The actual purpose of that parklet is to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety at a very dangerous intersection. The bypass traffic would frequently be going 30+mph due to the lack of a right-angle intersection, and drivers would not be looking for other road or sidewalk users.
SDOT could have put in jersey barriers and left grey cement, but instead engaged some neighborhood artists to make it look a little nicer. You could always ask SDOT to pressure-wash the art away if you don’t like it, I suppose, but let’s keep the safety improvements.
Ideally local businesses would like to have two more things: more parking AND more comfortable sidewalks. Parklets are trading off between the two, and losing a parking space here and there really isn’t a big deal.
If we want solutions for parking, it’d not be fighting for one or two spaces. Turning the Ezell lot or the Lincoln parking lot into parking towers would be much more meaningful ideas.
I’m not opposed to parklets if they’re actually well used, and used year round. But a parklet is not a “trade off” between the two, since you can neither walk through them or park in them. Unless a parklet is actually consistently used by people, it’s just valuable space that’s being wasted.
Specifically the Molly Moon’s mentioned earlier does help pedestrians. Really many restaurants or cafes in Wallingford can be helped by parklets. It’s easy to see how Bodrum, TNT, Fainting Goats types can utilize space outside. Musashi can use better waiting area outside also. Ideal setting for business is to have a core walking area with through traffic passing on a different street, while having some parking structure on the edge. Kind of like Ballard Ave or University Way plus more parking added around. Or the more extreme version of it: University Village.
Ben, people aren’t going to use your “great little parks” on residential streets. Certainly not to the degree that justifies converting so much street space, anyway. And that’s in the summertime. What do you think will be the utility of these spaces the other 9 months of the year?
And btw, about that “free parking for private cars that almost all the time sit unused:”
So cars have to be moving for you to consider them being used? People have to be able to park them to use them. For example, if I drive down to Pudge bros and park momentarily to pick up a pizza, my parked, it doesn’t mean my parked, unmoving car isn’t being used. And I’m sure Pudge bros is happy to have the business with more people like myself ordering a pizza and picking it up.
We didn’t build roads for parks or for people’s exercise routine, recreation, or hobby. They’re for transportation of people, goods, and services, period.
Residential streets are not roads.
This must be setup for a joke, but I’ll bite – how are they not roads?
Wikipedia has good definitions:
A street is a strip of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, where people may reside, assemble and interact. Streets are part of Urban planning.
A road is a strip of land connecting two or more destinations over which people and goods are transported. Roads are part of Road transport.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Streets_and_roads
But as pointed out in the following statement: “When a road passes through an urban area, it may also serve as a street.”
A street is clearly a kind of road.
I am very disappointed that this was not a joke.
Residential streets are not roads!
Remember when we were kids, we played in the street. With creativity and a lot less negativity kids could again.
You’re thinking, maybe with lower population density, a lower volume of traffic would make the streets a little less dangerous?
(Or maybe thinking the opposite, we could keep increasing density until kids have no outdoor space but the street?)
You guys are thinking about Issaquah or something like that. In real cities, there are no streets for kids to play on. You’d need parks and plazas.
More pedestrians and planting and furniture all slow cars down.
Many cities in the developed world have inner city street safe enough to play in.
The only reason kids can’t play in the streets in our area (the off-arterial blocks between W’ford/Stone/45th/50th) is because a**h**** cut through the neighborhood too fast. Is there any reason for residents or guests to need to go more than 10-15 mph to get to and from a home with a few blocks of an arterial?
Well yes. The designated school is B.F. Day. For us that means crossing Stone where Bastyr is. A crosswalk without a light.
I agree with you on this. I’ve actually tried getting the city to install some of those concrete turtles to slow them down, but no luck. It’s also part of the reason why I’ll always oppose bike lanes on 50th, because it will send even more cars onto side streets to avoid the backups.
These days because of apps like Waze, more and more people take neighborhood streets. Waze correctly identified that going through the neighborhood streets would be much faster than the arterial streets during rush hours. I think many cars that zip through are not residents or guests, but frustrated commuters.
Wallingford is right now a drive-through neighborhood, where people can buy take-outs or visit pharmacies on their way home.
Well technically Wallingford is comprised of streets and avenues. Which is also in wikipedia.
Private car ownership is going away fast. We will find better use for the space they take up.
Our local businesses will be forced out long before there’s any appreciable drop in car ownership.
Local businesses are going to be around even after car ownership drops. Many local businesses that are here today are probably gonna be gone soon, whatever the car situation is. Parking is not the cause for all the rapid local business changes we see over the past few years. You think Hawaiian Breeze or Drum Exchange would still be here if we didn’t have the parklets?
“Private car ownership is going away fast.”
Funny, I coulda sworn I saw some privately owned cars when I was stuck in traffic yesterday on I-5…
Seattle Times article this morning finds that privately owned cars in Seattle are still growing, by 12% annually like population. Number of households with two or more looks like about the same growth rate as households with only one.
I was hoping someone saw this story…in this corner, Bryan, and in this corner, hayduke! DING!!!
That article does make good arguments for policy to help people give up thier cars.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/booming-seattle-is-adding-cars-just-as-fast-as-people/
The article correctly pointed out that increasing density would help the car situation. Still, the comment of private care ownership going away fast is based on a different time scale. For some one month is fast, for some a decade is fast. Typically for social changes a decade is pretty fast.
Even if we don’t think about technology changes, car ownership will go down just as Seattle grows. People stop driving cars when density is high enough and life becomes more convenient.
The negativity here is very depressing.
Do people really think we couldn’t come up with better uses for some of the on street parking in Wallingford?
Can people not imagine ways we could make our streets more people friendly?
Can people not picture more trees and grass and sitting places along streets where car driver’s don’t assume every block is a straight line?
Be positive and imaginative.
“Can people not picture more trees and grass and sitting places?”
Okay I will be positive and imaginative for you. Change the current HALA scheme to require significant setbacks for any new development to make room for those amenities. Boom, done.
How about tearing down all the single family houses and change half of Wallingford into something like Discovery Park? Then the rest of the land can be used to build mid-density buildings that will be enough to house ALL existing families and much much more.
Northwest Wallingford Super Block!
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-rescue-barcelona-spain-plan-give-streets-back-residents
“How about tearing down all the single family houses…”
I know you and most of the rest of the Marxists in the YIMBY movement would like nothing better. Communist China might suit you better. Too bad you live in America, where we value and respect property rights, and where a big part of the American dream for most Americans regardless of income is to actually (gasp!) own a single family home of their own.
Larger and more isolated living space is not really a dream as you stated, otherwise there would be no urbanization, and people would all live in suburbs and ultra-burbs. Those are just some of the factors people would consider. In reality, people are trying to balance things like jobs, shopping, schools, and many other aspects of life. Insistence on single family house in neighborhoods as many recent New York Times articles have been discussing about: a way for richer folks to block poorer folks from their neighborhoods. That’s not American dream. That’s a reflection of the self-centered American culture. Again, if people really respect property rights, are people going to give back or pay back the lands to native Americans? Property right is a relatively modern concept that has been proven useful for assigning wealth. The concept is neither specifically American nor sacred. It’s just a social tool we use.
Poor people who live in less expensive neighborhoods like SF zoning too, because it helps them enjoy the American dream. Here’s a quote from a Tukwila city councilman in a Seattle Times OpEd from a year ago, for example:
“What I learned was virtually no one — probably fewer than 5 percent of those I spoke with — were supportive of smaller lot sizes, duplexes, triplexes, town homes, or small condo or apartment buildings on their streets or in their neighborhoods. And it didn’t matter whether they self-identified as Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist, black, white, Hispanic, Asian — you name it.
They had chosen to live in a single-family-housing neighborhood and did not want their neighborhoods to change. Not having to share a roof or a wall or a yard with another family, however you choose to define family, mattered a lot to the citizens I talked with. They didn’t worry if the lot across the street from them had someone from a different race, culture or religion. But they definitely did care if the lot had something other than a single-family home on it.
Having a home with your roof, your walls, your yard where you can plant flowers, vegetables or rocks, if you so choose, does matter. What’s more, having people next door and across the street who value that freedom also matters. It’s a dream, maybe not the American dream for everyone, but it sure is the dream for a lot of Americans. And those Americans choose to live in single-family neighborhoods — or dream of living in one.”
http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/why-dont-we-ask-single-family-neighborhoods-if-theyd-like-more-density/
By the way, the Indians as a whole didn’t believe in private property. And they sure didn’t mind stealing from and enslaving other tribes, either. But, you believe differently, that property rights are “just a social tool we use.” I guess you wouldn’t mind if someone stole your possessions?
So you are moving to Tukwila? Not sure what’s your point? If you ask people living in high density areas inside Seattle, you think you’d get the same answers? It’s just selection bias. At least the councilman is correct to say that it’s not American dream, just a dream many Americans have. I agree with that, and that’s why some people live in cities, and some people live in suburbs.
And that native Americans don’t believe in private property is exactly my point. Don’t call property right “American”. It’s a foreign idea that was brought to Americas and utilized in nefarious ways to steal from native Americans. That’s not the case anymore, but the concept itself isn’t really anything glorious. It’s just something useful in many situations.
The point has nothing to do with selection bias, as you claim. You said, “Insistence on single family house in neighborhoods as many recent New York Times articles have been discussing about: a way for richer folks to block poorer folks from their neighborhoods.” That’s why I posted the article, because you’re claiming that SF zoning is simply about rich people trying to block poor people, when poor people like SF zoning too.
Poor people liking single family house has nothing to do with if this can be used by rich people to block poor people out of their neighborhoods. Poor people love luxury cars, but if rich people insist only luxury cars can be on the highway, poor people will not be able to drive at all. The insistence on luxury car would effectively be a way for rich people to keep poor people off highway. Does that make the point clearer to you? And does it matter if poor people like luxury cars or not in that case?
No it doesn’t make your point any clearer, because there is no good reason for allowing only luxury cars on the highway. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of valid reasons for fighting HALA.
And the same issue actually applies to every aspect of the housing issue. The requirement for reviews and features are all well-meaning and are things that “everybody would want”, but most of them add cost therefore effectively act as barriers for the poor. We should not put in regulations and restrictions that only reflects what people want. They should also reflect what people can afford.
“We should not put in regulations and restrictions that only reflects what people want.”
Have you missed all those orange and black “keep Seattle Livable” signs? There’s a reason people display them, and that’s because they DO reflect what people want.
No, you’re missing his point. This is the truly egalitarian way: intentionally degrade the quality of our neighborhoods, in order to lower the economic barriers to living in them. It may sound crazy, but it’s more practical than actually providing people with good jobs and ridiculous fantasies like that.
Not degrading the quality of neighborhoods. Honestly the houses in the neighborhood are mostly old and not very good. Many sidewalks are broken. Newly built Apodment buildings typically are better structures than majority of the old houses in Wallingford.
The main thing that needs to be traded off is not quality, but the style and the quantity. Good jobs got nothing to do with it. If every single person in the world got 20k boost in annual earning, it would just boost the housing price in Wallingford as opposed to solving the problems we have. What’s needed is more housing in good locations like Wallingford. If big houses are really such a huge draw, there would be more people living in cheap and open areas in Eastern Washington. The fact is that big cities are centers that people want to be and we got to fit more people into big cities.
I’m not talking about giving everyone in the world more money, I’m talking about an economy that isn’t top-heavy with high-earning high tech industry workers, but rather has good jobs for anyone who wants to work. That’s what people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder need, is real opportunity, not Wallingford addresses. That’s just a fraud perpetrated on behalf of developers, and on behalf of the tech industry who needs dormitories here for their “highly mobile” workforce (meaning, gone when their skills become obsolete.)
Reminder: we are discussing an article about alternative uses of on-street parking spaces.
Well, I did walk along a lot of people friendly Wallingford street this afternoon, complete with trees and grass. QED.
No you didn’t. You drove your car.
Nah, no car today. Yesterday I did indulge in motor vehicle transportation, too lazy to haul my tuba the whole way on foot, an awkward burden over 30 lbs. and there’s more baggage with it.
Wallingford is quite the urbanist paradise. Walkable, and here’s your trees, which one appreciates all the more on a warm afternoon, but there’s always something – like that tuba – that keeps us in need of a car once in a while.
Glad you agree. We don’t need our cars everyday so we can l park them a little further away to make our streets even better.
You mean, drive around for blocks hunting for a spot? This would make our streets better … oh, right, “parklets” – when no one has a yard any more, they can put lawn chairs in the street, maybe a fake palm tree, and pretend it’s a park. No, thanks. Don’t think I’m being negative, I just have overwhelmingly positive feelings about street parking working like it should.
What you said got nothing to do with the issues. People need big city addresses because overall jobs are becoming more and more service-based therefore people need to live closer together, and there are efficiency gain by having a certain level of density. There is an increase of demand for Wallingford housing because Seattle overall is growing into a bigger city. Not sure in what way is job a factor. Seattle job market is very hot.
And stop pretending this is about the developers already. They are hardly a factor in all this. The influx of people is not caused by developers, and the barrier for new housing units are not caused by developers. It’s an issue between people who want to have their lives freeze in ten years ago versus people who want to adopt to current challenges.
They reflect what all the million dollar house owners want. Of course. Again a huge selection bias.
TJ, there’s no selection bias. You can randomly select anyone living here in Wallingford, and the odds are they’d be more likely to be against HALA rather than for it.
Your described way of selecting has selection bias, and you are trying to reinforce the problems. If you ask a bunch of mostly white and mostly million dollar house owners for policies, you’ll get policies that reinforce the neighborhood to be staying mostly white and mostly million dollar houses.
Good, you’re really catching the spirit there.
City hall doesn’t care in the least how street parking spaces are used. The real action is the on site parking requirements for apartments. Which are “none” in urban village areas, but there’s often a great deal of push-back about that, notably just recently Phinney did pretty well in an appeal. The developers who fund political careers down there, and fund organizations like Seattle For Everyone, prefer to be relieved of any such requirement, because it costs money that comes out of their profits. This turns into a city hall narrative that takes a genuine societal problem, dependance on motor vehicles, and focuses it on the most inane side effect, parking, making parking public enemy number one in the fight against motor vehicle dependence. Hence a program like this, that treats parking spaces as a cultural dysfunction that needs to be remedied by replacing parking spaces with “fun” (as long as it doesn’t take away enough spaces to make people really mad.)
Go ahead with the fight to develop a better alternative to the current motor vehicle based transportation network. We need it. Don’t let the developers pull the wool over your eyes, though, the enemy is not parking spaces.