Who knew a few parking spaces could help form a community?
“How might we transform the parking spaces in front of 105 Bond Street into a more welcoming, safe and enjoyable place for students?”
This was the question that over 50 undergraduate and graduate students from Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning (TMU SURP) contemplated just before the start of the 2022 school year. In Zoom breakout rooms, they rapidly bounced ideas back and forth, pinning inspiration images and sticky notes to Google Jamboards to demonstrate their proposals in less than an hour.
The students came up with several common ideas revolving around the themes of relaxation and play. Many students dreamed of more vegetation, movable furniture, lawn games, interactive art, and having food and drinks available. There were also some fun, unique ideas like turning the parking spaces into a community garden, a small business booth, or a French-themed outdoor café selling baked goods and playing French music.
Fast forward to Friday, September 16, 2022. It’s Park(ing) Day, which is a global, public, participatory art project where people across the world temporarily repurpose street parking spaces as tiny parks and places for art, play, and activism. This was Urban Minds’ second time designing and building a temporary activation for Park(ing) Day, informed by the students’ ideas to improve the space outside of their school.
The dull and boring on-street parking spaces were injected with new energy and life in under 30 minutes. Our team took advantage of the open-source Wikiblock site furniture pieces that were CNC cut at TMU’s Design + Technology LAB a week prior, which made it fast to assemble on site.
Student volunteers helped set up an interactive art installation called “Love Letters to the City”, where visitors wrote down their messages of affection to the city and pinned them up for others to see. There were also refreshments, artificial flowers, a mini bike tune-up and information station, and sidewalk chalk art set up, including a nearly impossible to win bean bag toss game.
This activation brought together over 50 community members, students, alumni, and faculty. People of diverse ages and backgrounds stopped by to share stories, laugh, play games, and enjoy each other’s company.
Dr. Zhixi Zhuang, Graduate Program Director and Associate Professor at TMU SURP, later reminisced how refreshing it was for her to spend time with her student’s 6-month old baby and several dogs at the Park(ing) Day activation. These were uncommon encounters for her as someone who frequents 105 Bond Street.
Joshua Fernandes, Departmental Assistant at TMU SURP, also reflected on his interactions during Park(ing) Day, “I had two particularly lovely interactions that reminded me of how deeply humanity can feel and be with one another when public space is claimed or reclaimed for depthful interaction — the first with Zhixi’s son, who is making his way about campus as a first year student. We spoke about cycling and life and road safety. The second with a parking enforcement officer who I invited over to the booth to pay my condolences for the loss of Andrew Hong. He had worked with him personally and was appreciative of the offer of care — an act of humanity that would not have happened between us if the space was used as it is every other day of the year.”
Interactions like these show the potential of how public spaces in our cities that invite people to pause and play can be used to bring people together. Next time you walk down a local street lined with on-street parking, ask yourself, “what if this parking space became a mini park?”
We have plans to continue building on this momentum and to deliver an even bigger and better Park(ing) Day in 2023! Stay tuned for more.
This project was made possible through a grant from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Faculty of Community Services for the School of Urban and Regional Planning.
Angela Ng is the Co-Founder of Urban Minds.
