The Next Generation of DIY Urbanism Projects: So Much Cooler Than Parklets

Park(ing) Day famously helped people all over the world re-envision the lowly parking spot, encouraging DIY urbanists for one day each fall to transform these spaces in their cities into parks, playgrounds, pop-up cafés – anything other than their intended use. The original idea, dreamed up by San Francisco-based urban design studio Rebar, went on to become a model urban prototype. The city of San Francisco adopted the concept for its "parklet" program. And now officially sanctioned parklets are popping up everywhere, most recently 2,000 miles away in Chicago.

The evolution of the parklet suggests that fly-by-night urban interventions can lead to something much more permanent. And this is the idea behind a series of "urban prototyping" festivals created by the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco. “We’re working with lessons learned form the parklet and Rebar and others to inform how projects that start at the small experimental prototyping scale can grow and expand across neighborhoods and cities,” says Jake Levitas, research director at GAFFTA.