Matt Driscoll: The politics of Park(ing) Day in Tacoma

There were 33 fewer parking spots than usual downtown Friday.

Did you notice?

Chances are, if you found yourself in the area, you knew something was different.

But it probably wasn’t a lack of available parking that caught your eye.

It probably was the parks. Or, more accurately, the parklets.

And the people.

Friday was Park(ing) Day, all over the world and in Tacoma. It’s an annual event, the third Thursday of every September. Locally, it’s orchestrated by Downtown on the Go. The idea is to turn metered parking stalls into active, public spaces.

In other words, tiny, temporary parks.

Like so many far-out ideas over the years, Park(ing) Day originated in San Francisco. It started in 2005, when an art and design studio converted one little parking space into a sod-covered miniature urban oasis, complete with a bench and a lone potted tree.

By 2011, Park(ing) Day installations could be found in over 160 cities, 35 countries and six continents.

“The great majority of San Francisco’s downtown outdoor space is dedicated to movement and storage of private vehicles, while only a fraction of that space is allocated to serve a broader range of public needs,” says the official “about” page on the Park(ing) Day website, which urges visitors with a banner at the top to “Reclaim your city!”

That’s the idea. Parking spaces are public spaces created from a car-centric perspective, and maybe, just maybe, there’s a more rewarding way to use a few of them.

“The mission ... is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat,” the explanation continues.

This critical debate can take a number of forms. In some cities Park(ing) Day is basically, as the website describes, “an unsanctioned guerrilla art action.”

In Tacoma, on the other hand, Park(ing) Day is an established celebration that hopefully sparks a little conversation along the way. Here, Downtown on the Go — which started Tacoma’s Park(ing) Day five years ago with just one spot — solicits applications months in advance from businesses and individuals interested in being involved.

“We have to get a permit from the city, so we have to follow the rules both for safety and just for being good neighbors,” Downtown on the Go Executive Director Kristina Walker explained. “We’re trying to make a positive point, not impede traffic.”

Of course, they are taking up valuable parking spaces, and any time the car-first mentality gets challenged tempers are likely to flare.

That’s part of the challenge.

“Absolutely,” Walker told me when asked if things sometimes get tense between Park(ing) Day participants and drivers looking for a place to park. “It offers us an opportunity to have a conversation.”

“It depends on their level of irritation,” said Walker of these conversations. “We’re helping to re-imagine the city and what it might be like if there were more parks and less parking spaces. ... Most of the negative comments come from confusion or misunderstanding. (Usually), people can get on board with the concept of it, even if they’re grumbling about having to park somewhere else.

“But we’re not winning over everyone.”

Of course not. Progress is incremental when it comes to rethinking the importance we place on designing our urban spaces with cars in mind.

All of this raises a valid question: What’s the larger point? It’s one thing to spark dialogue on one day a year before we all go back to parking business as usual. It’s quite another to actually change something.

For inspiration, however, Tacoma needs look no farther than downtown Olympia.

Since 2012, Olympia has operated a parklet program that allows downtown businesses to apply for and construct small, permanent parking-space parks in front of their locations, provided they meet certain requirements.

It’s like Park(ing) Day, 365 days a year.

The progress has been modest, with two current parklets in Olympia’s quaint downtown. But it also hasn’t led to an extreme parking crunch or an escalation in the divisive “war on cars” rhetoric.

Brian Wilson, the city of Olympia’s downtown liaison, calls Olympia’s parklet program a resounding success, crediting it with helping to activate a downtown with “a lot of underutilized spaces.” The program, he tells me, helps create “an inviting environment” and “increases your livability and perception of safety.”

“I think our parklet program has been a shining example of how to operate such a program nationwide,” Wilson told me. “At the very beginning we got some grumbling. ... I haven’t heard a comment about a loss of parking for two and a half years.”

So is a similar program possible in Tacoma?

“We’d love to help make it happen,” Walker says. “Some of these things just take one person getting excited about it.”

Or, better yet, a community.

This story was originally published September 19, 2015 at 1:48 AM with the headline "Matt Driscoll: The politics of Park(ing) Day in Tacoma."