Revisiting the San Francisco parklets problematizing publicness, parks, and transferability

Littke, Hélène

doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2015.12.010

Cited by 31 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…In a process like intersection repairs, the intervention has since been legalised and even proactively promoted and facilitated by the city government. The now typical division or task is one where the municipality reviews applications, and a sponsor (most commonly a cafe or restaurant adjoining the parking space) is responsible for the construction and maintenance of the parklet, as well as for spurring community support (Littke, 2016). The parklet programme in San Francisco implemented more than 40 parklets between 2009 and 2014 (Lydon & Garcia, 2015) and in 2015 alone there were more than 51 parklets in the city (Littke, 2016).…”

Section: Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The now typical division or task is one where the municipality reviews applications, and a sponsor (most commonly a cafe or restaurant adjoining the parking space) is responsible for the construction and maintenance of the parklet, as well as for spurring community support (Littke, 2016). The parklet programme in San Francisco implemented more than 40 parklets between 2009 and 2014 (Lydon & Garcia, 2015) and in 2015 alone there were more than 51 parklets in the city (Littke, 2016). Other cities followed, and Littke (2016) found parklet programmes in more than 80 cities worldwide.…”

Section: Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The parklet programme in San Francisco implemented more than 40 parklets between 2009 and 2014 (Lydon & Garcia, 2015) and in 2015 alone there were more than 51 parklets in the city (Littke, 2016). Other cities followed, and Littke (2016) found parklet programmes in more than 80 cities worldwide. Park(ing) day is an annual rapidly expanding global one day parklet event, growing from the first in San Francisco in 2005, to 975 in 162 cities and 35 countries in 2014 (Douay & Prevot, 2015).…”

Section: Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From “streets for traffic” to “streets for people”: can street experiments transform urban mobility?

Bertolini

2020

Transport Reviews

132

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Despite their growing application and worldwide diffusion, the transformative potential of experiments aimed at achieving "streets for people" rather than "streets for traffic" remains largely under researched. There is little to no comparative assessment of already existing experiments, and no critical reflection on their specific added value for systemic change. Building from a literature review and discussion, this paper aims to fill this gap by addressing the following questions: Which types of city street experiments have been undertaken in the pursuit of the vision of "streets for people" instead of "streets for traffic"? What are their backgrounds, main characteristics, and reported impacts? And perhaps most importantly: How can these city street experiments trigger systemic change in urban mobility? These elements are detailed per experiment type, in order of ascending functional complexity: the re-marking of streets, the re-purposing of car parking, the re-purposing of sections of streets, and the repurposing of entire streets. Illustrative examples from practice include intersection repairs, parklets, the pavement to plazas programme, play streets, ciclovias and open streets. The reviewed literature documents positive impacts on physical activity, active transportation, safety and social interaction and capital, and more mixed impacts on business activity. While street experiments aim to create fundamentally different arrangements of urban mobility, their potential as triggers of a greater systemic change is unclear. This paper uses the defining characteristics of "transition experiments"a concept derived from the field of transition studiesto develop and illustrate a framework to assess this transformative potential. In the conclusions, the review and assessment framework are used to sketch a research and policy agenda for this increasingly topical phenomenon.

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Section: Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From “streets for traffic” to “streets for people”: can street experiments transform urban mobility?

Bertolini

2020

Transport Reviews

132

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The municipality has scaled up, physically increasing in size and improving aesthetically in design, what started as a grassroots initiative. The result is a new streetscape type for long-term installations, funded, designed and maintained mostly by neighbouring businesses in partnership with the city (King, 2012;Littke, 2016). While, in the beginning, they represented a way to evaluate, activate and reclaim such spaces as a valuable part of the public realm and as constitutive social practices, today's parklets mainly expand the seating capacity of sidewalk cafes (Figure 1).…”

Section: Temporary Installations In Shaping and Making Contemporary Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Design Actions for the Global Gaze. Evolution and Contradictions of Temporary Installations in San Francisco’s Public Space

Caramaschi

2020

Planning Theory & Practice

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This paper focuses on a case of the gradual corporatisation of temporary interventions in San Francisco, California. Here, the creation of ad hoc programmes for proposing, advancing and maintaining provisional public spaces in the city has challenged the essence of previously recognised bottom-up practices, contributing to hidden forms of spatial and social exclusion. The analysis of this case is an opportunity for critical reflection on the controversies and contradictions generated by the upscaling of what started as a way to claim rights over spaces and to raise the possibility of non-traditional forms of producing and maintaining the public space.

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“…From an urban sustainability perspective, this situation is suboptimal because the unsustainable mode of automobile transportation dominates sustainable modes like cycling. Consequently, urban planning movements in a number of pioneering cities are increasingly experimenting with drastic policies, such as applying congestion charges (London) [7] and repurposing or removing car parking (Amsterdam, Oslo) [8][9][10]. These efforts agree in one common goal, together with the literature on cycling safety [11][12][13][14] and with cost-benefit analysis [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data-driven strategies for optimal bicycle network growth

et al. 2020

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Urban transportation networks, from pavements and bicycle paths to streets and railways, provide the backbone for movement and socioeconomic life in cities. To make urban transport sustainable, cities are increasingly investing to develop their bicycle networks. However, it is yet unclear how to extend them comprehensively and effectively given a limited budget. Here we investigate the structure of bicycle networks in cities around the world, and find that they consist of hundreds of disconnected patches, even in cycling-friendly cities like Copenhagen. To connect these patches, we develop and apply data-driven, algorithmic network growth strategies, showing that small but focused investments allow to significantly increase the connectedness and directness of urban bicycle networks. We introduce two greedy algorithms to add the most critical missing links in the bicycle network focusing on connectedness, and show that they outmatch both a random approach and a baseline minimum investment strategy. Our computational approach outlines novel pathways from car-centric towards sustainable cities by taking advantage of urban data available on a city-wide scale. It is a first step towards a quantitative consolidation of bicycle infrastructure development that can become valuable for urban planners and stakeholders.

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Revisiting the San Francisco parklets problematizing publicness, parks, and transferability

Cited by 31 publications

References 15 publications

From “streets for traffic” to “streets for people”: can street experiments transform urban mobility?

From “streets for traffic” to “streets for people”: can street experiments transform urban mobility?

Design Actions for the Global Gaze. Evolution and Contradictions of Temporary Installations in San Francisco’s Public Space

Data-driven strategies for optimal bicycle network growth

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