For the past several months, my coworkers and I over at The Open Planning Project have been hard at work on an important redesign and new product launch. I'm now excited to say that the final launch is, ahem, days away. Streetsblog and StreetFilms have been hugely popular since they launched two years ago, making an impact here in NYC and beyond, and developing a great community of readers. The Livable Streets Network, as we're calling the new, unified effort, intends to take this to the next level, by providing more online tools and new opportunities for collaboration.
TOPP
, I'd like to announce the launch of a new website:
, where for a single day, regular parking spaces are "leased" for use as temporary public parks. This year's Park(ing) Day will be held, worldwide, on September 19th. Here's the description from the
On November 16th, 2005, REBAR opened eyes worldwide by transforming a metered parking spot into a park. Locating a site that was underserved by public outdoor space, we installed a small, temporary park that provided nature, seating, and shade. By our calculations, we provided 24,000 square-foot-minutes of public open space that afternoon. See the original PARK(ing) video!
Since the initial PARK(ing) project was created we've been contacted by people worldwide. What began as a simple, playful idea has become a lively and visible symbol of the desire to reprogram the street and increase public open space in cities all over the planet.
TOPP produced the website that supports Park(ing) Day NYC, working with Transportation Alternatives, who is organizing and promoting the event here in NYC. TA is giving out mini-grants of $200 each for Park(ing) spot makers, so apply now. This year's event is also co-sponsored by the EyeBeam Art & Technology Center, who will hopefully encourage some creative submissions.
(For you web geeks out there, the Park(ing) Day NYC site was made using Pylons and jQuery, and was built using the codebase we originally created for Block Party NYC)
Be sure to check out these videos, which are the best way to get the feel for the event.
The original Park(ing) experiment in 2005:
The first Park(ing) Day in SF in 2006: and Park(ing) Day 2007 here in NYC:
Over at The Open Planning Project, we've always had a bit of a hard time explaining what we do. That job just got a little bit easier, with the launch of the new-and-improved TOPP website last Friday. Reactions from within the staff have been remarkably similar: something along the lines of "Phew, now I can finally tell people what the heck it is we do here!'. Kudos to Vanessa, Jackie and Cholmes for distilling a lot of information about our various projects and goals into something remarkably coherent. I'm proud to work at TOPP, and now I have somewhere to point people when I want to show it off :)
We've code named the project "Woonerf," which is dutch for "a street or group of streets where pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over motorists." It's an apt title indeed for a group of sites that aims to unite and motivate citizens across the country who want to make their cities more comfortable, livable, and sustainable. While we're not quite ready to flip the switch, we do have a live demo that folks can check out in the meantime. If you'd like to see it, just fill out this short form, and we'll send you a link. Expect more soon as we approach the launch. Here goes nothing...
