City Parks Association

The number of downtown parks across America will increase dramatically this September.

Friday, September 19, 2008 is National Park(ing) Day, when metered public parking spaces nationwide will become temporary public parks. The project is sponsored by The Trust for Public Land (TPL), a national conservation nonprofit.

National Park(ing) Day is an annual event celebrating parks by creating temporary parks in public parking spaces. Supporters in 25 cities nationwide, including New York, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Denver, Washington D.C, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, have announced participation. The goals, according to organizers, are to celebrate parks and promote the need for more parks in America’s cities.

This is the first year Philadelphia joins cities across the nation to participate in National Park(ing) Day. Over 25 teams, from PennDesign to P’unk Ave to the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, have begun brainstorming new public open spaces in parking spots throughout the city. For more information—including the full list of participating organizations, contact information, and important dates—and to learn how you can help, visit http://blog.parkingdayphilly.com/.

Park(ing) Day was founded in 2006 by San Francisco art collective REBAR, in collaboration with TPL.

“Our goal was to encourage people to rethink the way our streets are used, and to temporarily expand the amount of public open space in an underserved area of downtown San Francisco,” says John Bela, co-founder of Rebar. “We added ‘24,000 square foot-minutes’ of public open space that afternoon.”

Watch the Sundance Channel’s coverage of last year’s Park(ing) Day event here.

Photos from last year’s event, as well as a full list of cities with maps and details, are available online at www.tpl.org/parkingday.