Columbus, Ohio USA
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Park(ing) Day

by Dawn McCombs
November/December 2019 Issue

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Photo by Dawn McCombs, 2019

A new park appeared in the Short North in September. It was lush with tropical trees and offered ample tables and chairs for visitors. It even included a stack of books and games. It was occupied for most of the day, bringing neighbors and visitors together. It was a hit, and the most interesting aspect about the park was that it was a pop-up just for one day.

Josh Tomey and Katie Shipman created this park in an actual parking spot in the Short North. They fed the meter and reserved it for the day in front of Prologue Bookshop at 841 N. High St. They were celebrating International Park(ing) Day, a global event held every year on the third Friday in September to inspire cities and developers to create more green space in urban areas.

International Park(ing) Day began in 2005 in San Francisco hoping to get cities to reimagine how we allocate our public space and to create opportunity for social interaction that wasn’t there before. It has become an annual event to encourage landscape architects, community members and students to transform metered parking spaces into temporary parklets.

“Trees and barriers like that help calm the streetscape. Traffic moves slower and pedestrians feel more comfortable. It takes the street from a place you want to move through, to a place you want to be.” said Josh, who is an architect by profession. “A lot of cities have parking spaces, but not a lot of park space. A parking space doesn’t have to be viewed as a permanent construct. It can evolve with the needs of the city.”

Josh has done this three times. The first two were while studying architecture in Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota. This is the first one he organized in Columbus. He chose the Short North because of the visibility and the regional draw to help spread the concept. Already in one day the pair spoke with six different groups of people from other cities who said they hoped to do this in their own states.

“If you change the visual environment every 20 feet or less, the pedestrians are more likely to remain engaged than if you had a long expanse of the same thing.” Josh added. When asked what he heard most that day he said, “People wished it was there every day."

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