Pavement to Parks, San Francisco förvandlar trottoarer och parkeringsplatser till mikroparker
Posted Under: San Francisco
Klicka på bilden på den utomordentligt lilla Guerrero Parken i San Francisco
Det är egentligen dumt att fråga hur många människor som bor i USA eftersom samhället inte prioriterar människor utan bilar. Under de senaste 100 åren har det amerikanska samhället byggts upp kring bilen och bilismen med en en tillfällig nick till människorna. Det syns med skrämmande tydlighet här i den smala Silicon Valley med sina gigantiska parkeringsplatser stora som Småland och sina pyttesmå parker.
Men som John King skriver i San Francisco Chronicle så har man i San Francisco startat ett projekt för att förvandla några av stadens helt onödiga betong och asfalt-områden till mikroparker: SF parklets a homegrown effort – SFGate
San Francisco’s 2-year-old parklet effort, where parking spaces are reborn as miniature public plazas, has attracted media attention and been emulated in cities from Adelaide, Australia, to Philadelphia.
But as eight volunteers on Saturday shoveled dirt from a downtown sidewalk into a low-slung frame of angled wood and steel, another aspect of parklets was on display: They’re summoned into existence not from the top down, but the bottom up. … The 35-foot-long, 6-foot-deep space is among the most ambitious of the 31 parklets that have been installed since the first platform with seating replaced a pair of parking spaces on Divisadero Street in March 2010.
The outer walls are steel; the interior’s cedar surface slides and twists in eye-catching patterns that also form planter edges and seating. The undulations serve a practical purpose as well, one that responds both to lessons learned at early parklets and to Farm:Table’s location on the border between the Tenderloin and Nob Hill.
Det här är ett projekt som ska komma från New York.
San Francisco har lyckligtvis en riktig lunga, nämligen den stora Golden Gate Park på hela 412 hektar, större än den mer välkända Central Park i New York, om vilken en ny antologi just har publicerats: “Central Park – An Anthology”, Edited by Andrew Blauner – NYTimes.com
In a sprightly new collection, “Central Park: An Anthology,” edited by Andrew Blauner, the park is celebrated by a bevy of talented writers. Some entries are excerpts from books: There’s a chapter, for instance, from “The Falconer of Central Park,” the naturalist Donald Knowler’s 1984 book about the park’s wildlife, and one from Colson Whitehead’s 2003 ode to the city, “The Colossus of New York.”
Some are newly commissioned pieces, and some are well-known riffs by well-known writers, like Marie Winn’s 1994 Wall Street Journal column answering the question Holden Caulfield asked in “The Catcher in the Rye” about where the Central Park ducks go in the winter: They go, she says, to a secret place on the west side of the park, near 77th Street, under the Balcony Bridge, where a natural spring keeps the water from freezing. The one thing missing from this volume is a detailed historical essay reminding the reader of how Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition for the space in 1858,
Vill i det här sammanhanget passa på att göra reklam för den mycket lilla men ändå parken framför Burlingame High School i Burlingame med sina svalkande träd som påminner mig om Henri Rousseaus träd. Se bilden ovan.
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