philly

After a quick real estate shoot on Friday, I walked and rode my bike around Center City in search of the creative installations of Park[ing] Day Philadelphia 2009.

Park(ing) Day seeks to reclaim parking spots and transform them into engaging, people-friendly public spaces for one day a year.

Above is a shot of the [parkEDGE] at Broad and Walnut by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.

Here's the interactive map of all the locations of parking spot parks throughout the city. Looks like I got to 9 of the 35 or so on the map. Updates were sent out all day via their twitter feed @parkingdayphila. Above is a shot of the crew from 350 philly!. I've seen them around town at a few events and I have no idea what they actually do but their group's mission is cool:

350.org is an international campaign with a mission to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis. Our focus is on the number 350–as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. We are already above the safe zone at 390 ppm, and unless we are able to rapidly return to 350 ppm this century, we risk reaching tipping points and irreversible climate impacts.

The largest in scale park I came across was one by the good people at SMP Architects on the 1600 block of Walnut St – their .004 Acre Wood.

I ran into Bianca [I just met her last week!] at her company's [VizThink Philly] SketchPark on the 1600 block of Chestnut St. In the shot above, Johnny is showing me what people had sketched earlier that day.

Above is Emily of the Center for Architecture who was responsible for the coolest space I saw all day. Set up on the 1300 block of Arch St was a lovely houseplant garden, hammock, rain barrel, benches on re-purposed barrels all on what seemed like discarded carpet squares. There was even a table with a bunch of urban sustainability publications like Next American City and GRID.

Last but certainly not least is the coolest spot for a reclaimed park I came across all day. It was a spot on the south side of the Market St Bridge. These two, didn't catch where they were from, were giving away cups of grass for people to have mini parks on their desks. Since I don't have a desk job (Hallelujah!) I didn't take one. They had given away most of the 200 cups they brought out for the day.

Check out more photos in this flickr set and check out shots from around the world in this flickr group.

More coverage from Plan Philly.

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