All About Philly's Awesome Pop-Up Scene

New York may have dominated headlines regarding big tactical urbanism efforts in years past. But it’s New York’s near neighbour Philadelphia that might be the U.S’s real tactical capital. Rife with small-scale interventions making for a big collective change, Philly’s upswing in public space improvements is changing the way other cities do pop-up.

Calling all tactical efforts in the city ‘small’ might be selling things short. The city’s newest parklet was just installed near Penn’s campus, and it’s massive. At 60 feet (18m) its one of the longest parklets ever built.

West Philly Parklets. Source: newsworks.org

It’s one of 5 major parklets scattered around the neighbourhood. UCD, the local community organization who maintains them, recently published the nationally-acclaimed study: "The Case for Parklets: Measuring the Impact on Sidewalk Vitality and Neighborhood Businesses." The study provided data and recommendations based on a multi-year analysis of parklets and their ability to bring more life to public spaces.

The study has given pop-up efforts the quantitative bona fides to make similar improvements across the country. But in Philly, anecdotal evidence has fueled pop-up success; none more so than the buzz behind the now infamous Philly beer garden scene.

Beer garden pop-ups like the Spruce Street Harbor Park, The Oval and the PHS Pop-Up Garden have become some of the city’s most popular summer destinations. And for good reason – they’re awesome!

Spruce Street Harbor Park. Source: wheretophilly.com

The Spruce Street Harbor Park has so far been the stand out. The temporary summertime village is now in its second year and has upgraded the down and out waterfront area with a floating restaurant, weekend beer garden, hammocks, shuffleboard, and hundreds of thousands of visitors.

And in true pop-up style, the space’s cheep and cheerful successes have drummed up support for long-term solutions for improving the waterfront. Above all, this is the true power of the pop-up paradigm and one that’s been observed for years. Short-term improvements can and do lead to long-term change.

So it's no surprise that across town Philly’s most famously awesome pop-up, The Porch, has now began to improve with permanent features. The Porch started as a temporary experiment to breathe life into what was a parking lot next to 30th Street Station, the City’s main transport hub. That was 4 years ago. Now the folks behind the Porch have teamed up with Groundswell Design Group and Gehl Studio to enhance the space with more permanent planters, seating, lighting and food options that compliment the popular programming schedule.

The City of Philadelphia has also taken note of this movement across its city. In recent years they’ve implemented a Pedestrian Plaza Program to grease the wheels for neighbourhood groups to build their own pop-ups, and with a solid revenue stream from city coffers. That too has been pretty awesome for improving open spaces in Philly’s neighbourhoods.

If the past is a measure of future successes, it isn’t likely Philly’s pop-up revolution will slow down. Maybe we’ll see floating beer gardens down the Delaware next year? Or roller skate rinks along Market Street? At this point, nothing seems totally off limits. Lets just hope it stays as equally awesome as years past.

Greg Meckstroth is a certified planner, award winning urban designer, and published writer, Greg's passion for cities and placemaking extends across various spectrums. Connect with Greg on twitter here.

Reclaiming Public Space in Vancouver

Over the past couple of years, the City of Vancouver has been climbing the most livable cities indexes. Vancouver has shifted priorities to improving urban mobility, community engagement and social vitality. VIVA Vancouver is one such policy that provides funding for applicants who want to transform public parking spaces into mini-parks. This funding opportunity paved the way for the French Quarter Parklet to be born.

The parklet will occupy two parking spaces outside Chocolaterie de la Nouvelle France. With support from the Chocolaterie as well as PWL Partnership Landscape Architects and the property manager, the parking spaces will be transformed into a place where passerby's can unwind. The Parklet will be equipped with a bike bar (one of the first in North America), art wall, planters, benches an tables with umbrellas.

The French Quarter Parklet is a product of research conducted by one of PWL’s own interns. While performing research for her Master’s thesis, Kathleen Corey, identified locations that would be ideal to host a parklet and support local business simultaneously.

What’s amazing about this project is that it demonstrates what can happen when communities re-claim public spaces. By converting just two parking spaces into a community meeting place, it produced unforeseen economic and social benefits. You can watch the positive reaction of The French Quarter Parklet here.

Kidnapping Condominium Advertisements

Toronto likes to boast that it has more cranes that any other North American city. In fact, some politicians like to make the claim that Toronto has more cranes than New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Miami combined. But what does this really mean and how does this explosion of development affect existing residents?

Increased noise, obstructed views and restricted streets are obvious impediments to development. However, there are other inconveniences that politicians, construction companies and developers overlook. Toronto artist, Sean Martindale is trying to draw attention to one of these issues.

As a skeptic of advertising in the public realm, Martindale is frustrated and concerned with condominium advertisements that take up physical space on Toronto’s sidewalks. The A-frame “sandwich board” style ads that dominate sidewalk space make Toronto’s streets an obstacle course for pedestrians. In certain locations, Martindale has counted up to 40 signs in a single downtown intersection.

Inspired by this frustration, Martindale has collaborated with Adam Kraweksy and Martin Reis to turn these urban obstacles into artwork. The artists kidnap sandwich board advertisements from downtown sidewalks and then modify them. The former advertisements of shiny, brand-new condominium buildings are replaced with images of every day street life or old shots of buildings that have been torn down to make way for more condos. The artwork intends to send a very different message than one of luxurious living.

After revamping the sandwich boards, the artists relocate the advertisements in new locations across the city. Martindale, Krawesky and Reis have installed 36 modified sandwich boards around Toronto. A map with the boards’ locations can be found here.

While some may argue that the project does not alleviate congested pedestrian space, it effectively draws attention to an unanticipated problem of urban development and challenges people to reflect on the outcome of Toronto's condo boom.

International PARK(ing) Day

In late September the 9th annual International PARK(ing) Day was celebrated across 6 continents, 35 countries and over 160 cities. But let me back up, this project had very modest beginnings in 2005. The scale of success was never imaged when the project first began.

The original project was born out of a desire to draw attention to the fact that over 70% of San Francisco’s public space was dedicated to the private automobile. Rebar wanted to challenge the status quo and make an innovative, creative point. The idea was simple, yet effective.

By paying the parking meter fee, urban space can be leased on a short-term basis for an alternative use then its original purpose. From this idea a single parking spot was transformed into a temporary public park. The original PARK was erected for two hours. When the meter expired, the temporary park was deconstructed. When a single photograph of the project began circulating around the Internet, Rebar began receiving requests to create a PARK(ing) project in other cities. Instead of duplicating the same installation, a how-to manual was developed to empower international communities to create their own parks. With this, “PARK(ing) Day” was born.

Original 2005 PARK  Image Courtesy of Rebar — Original 2005 PARK
Image Courtesy of Rebar

Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has been adapted, modified and reinvented. Each year, the project seems to highlight another urban challenge. The original PARK(ing) project asked citizens to reconsider how they valued public spaces. It challenged the notion that planning decisions are permanent and sought to deconstruct traditional perceptions of public spaces.

In recent years, projects have expanded beyond calling attention to the lack of green space in urban areas. Free health clinics, temporary urban farms, political seminars, art installations, bike repair shops and a wedding ceremony have all taken place in a parking space.

These examples illustrate the power of the PARK(ing) Project. It encourages local communities to draw attention to missing neighborhood attributes. This project fosters an entrepreneurial, creative spirit that can only make people smile as they walk past these pop-up installations. PARK(ing) Day also provides the opportunity for local communities to highlight areas for improvement and ask local authorities to address these issues.

Encouraging Innovation through Inclusivity

Image Courtesy of the Museum of Vancouver

Upcycled Urbanism is a participatory project stemming from the desire to challenge the status quo of urban design in Vancouver. Using Facebook to communicate information about workshops, teams of artists, designers, students and creative individuals came together to discusses ideas, potential changes and design prototypes.

This month, teams will come together to actually build their ideas using material salvaged from the construction of Port Mann Bridge. Creations will be on display in an outdoor exhibition throughout July. The community will be asked to provide feedback and critique the design-build displays.

By encouraging people to think about public space, Upcycled Urbanism hopes to provoke conversations about urban design, the public realm, foster collaboration between unlikely groups and create a sense of community.

Large-Scale Impact Through Small-Scale Ideas

The space between the sidewalk and the road is usually perceived as an insignificant piece of public space. Most probably do not even know the name of this space (it’s called a verge for the record). Thanks to one resident's initiative, verges in Halifax, Nova Scotia are looking a lot more attractive these days. Sam Austin found a way to strengthen community bonds, reduce petty crime and even generate a new tourism industry, all with the simple act of planting tulips in Tulip Street’s verges.

Founder, Sam Austin with his Daughter on Tulip Street. Image Courtesy of The Chronicle Herald

Austin began planting tulips outside of his home two years ago. Neighbors quickly took notice. Generous donations from the public and private sector provided residents the opportunity to organize a ‘planting party’ to plant over 10,000 tulip bulbs. No one could have anticipated the outcome of this community initiative.

Image Courtesy of Wiebe in Halifax

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<w:LatentStyles DefLock… — Image Courtesy of Wiebe in Halifax

While the tulips are in bloom for only a small time period, public space that looks cared for deters acts of petty crime. A case can be argued that the flowers have marginally increased public safety and mitigated acts of petty crimes.

Furthermore, the tulip project has generated significant positive press for Halifax. The positive media attention has brought a wave of tulip tourists that inevitably contribute to the local economy. In a city that has experienced waves of urban decay and renewal, the unexpected tourism industry is a welcome source of revenue.

Most importantly, the tulip project makes people happy. Being proud of your residential street or taking a new route to work so you can benefit from Tulip Street’s positive externalities are some of life’s most simple pleasures. In a time when large-scale development is threatening some of our most cherished public places, it’s important to get back to the basics. Planting tulips on Tulip Street is an inexpensive, cohesive community initiative that demonstrates how small-scale ideas can have large-scale impacts.

Tweet Your Love

Most Canadians are proud of their home city. Vancouver has claim to ocean and mountains. Toronto encourages diversity, arts and culture and Quebec City oozes with history and European charm. Let’s face it- Canadian cities are fantastic.

Spacing and Pattison Onestop have collaborated in an innovative public art project to encourage residents to publically praise love for their city. Urban enthusiasts can tweet a reason they love their city to @DearCityCanada. The best tweets will be displayed on outdoor digital billboards across Canada all summer.

Digital and physical space are being used to celebrate the big and small things that make Canadian cities so great. Tweets have drawn attention to Edmonton’s unpretentious night scene, Hamilton’s foodtrucks and artcrawls and Iqaluit’s livable and luxurious igloos. Having a local perspective makes the project more appealing.These urban attributes would rarely be mentioned by travel blogs and guides. Best of all, Twitter is connecting Canadians coast to coast by facilitating conversation and interest in Canadian cities.

New York City's DIY Street Seats

Posteritati Custom Framing - Little Italy

Newly arrived in New York City, I’ve been doing a lot of walking. Browsing vintage stores in Williamsburg, getting cultured at the Met, shopping in Soho, soaking in the fabled street life of the West Village, admiring the Manhattan skyline from the Brooklyn waterfront, I could go on. The importance of walkability is becoming increasing recognised, but with all that walking, sometimes you just need a place to stop, to rest, and to watch the world go by.

Luckily for us weary wanderers, there is an abundance of informal seating available on the streets of New York. From plastic chairs outside a noodle shop to a bespoke wooden bench built around a street tree - once you start noticing street seats you suddenly start seeing them everywhere. This trend inspired Street Plans Collaborative to launch Street Seats, an open source project to map New York’s informal public seating. The aim of the project is to raise awareness of the positive impact of something as simple as providing a seat, and to inspire more people to get involved in improving public space in their neighbourhood. In conjunction with Neighborland, Street Plans Collaborative hosted a mapping party last weekend to build up the database of locations across the city.

We met up on a sunny afternoon in Union Square and went over the rules of what does and does not constitute a street seat – not a park bench or street furniture provided by the government, not outdoor cafe seating, we were interested only in seats provided by businesses, community groups or individuals as a gift to the city. Armed with smartphone cameras we then fanned out to tackle different neighbourhoods across the city, uploading geotagged photos as we went. My group managed to find over 20 street seats in Chinatown and Little Italy, with the mapping party resulting in over 100 new additions to the database across the city. Not bad for an afternoon’s work!

Regrouping in a bar later to discuss our findings, we discovered that while we had expected most seats to be associated with cafes and restaurants, they also included such diverse offerings as marble benches outside a church, a ‘customers only’ seat outside a cigar shop, to even a bench outside a bail bonds office! While there were some beautiful handcrafted artisan pieces, there were also simple utilitarian designs, and the seats didn’t necessarily have to be elaborate to be effective. An interesting trend was that street seats tended to be clustered together, suggesting that seeing the success of one example inspired other people to get involved too – exactly the process which streetseats.org aims to encourage in the digital realm.

Are there any DIY street seats in your neighbourhood?

Interactive installations and public spaces

Public spaces are increasingly being designed to not only look great but also foster an element of activity, engagement and interaction. Trending worldwide, new examples of interactive public spaces (both temporary and permanent) include, Millennium Park in Chicago, Sky Mirror in Sydney and Water Light Graffiti in Poitiers.

Millennium Park is the centre piece of Chicago. The park is highly interactive and is a key attraction for both residents and tourists. One of the key sculptures, Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor (or as I refer to it, the 'Jelly Bean'), provides endless opportunities to photograph your reflection or the reflection of the Chicago skyline and provides a distorted reality. The sculpture was intriguing and provided me with many opportunities to not only engage with my friends but also other people who were exploring the Jelly Bean.

Another popular attraction in Millennium Park is the Crown Fountain. During the day the two glass brick towers project images of faces on their LED displays. The faces continue to change and squirt out water through a water nozzle. The artwork attracts people of all ages to play in the fountain, particularly on hot days. Another interactive installation involving water and LEDs was Water Light Graffiti which was temporarily displayed in Poitiers in France. This installation has taken interactive public spaces one step further by giving the design powers back to the public.

Kapoor's public experiements are not only limited to Chicago but can be found across the world. In Sydney, the Museum of Contemporary Art is currently exhibiting a number of Annish Kapoor’s artworks and sculptures. Kapoor experiments with a range of materials, however his works are recognisable for their scale and impact. The Sky Mirror, which is currently located at the front of the MCA, was previously located outside the Rockafellar Centre in New York and provides tourists and visitors to the MCA with opportunities to experience Kapoor’s ingenious sculptures and distort reality.

Large artistic installations create interactive public spaces which are not only trending but are successfully producing vibrant attractions within large cities. Look out for temporary public installations or even permanent ones in a city near you!

Also check out these installations:

Cloud Gate, Millenium Park. Image courtesy of Laura Schmahmann.

Cloud Gate, Millennium Park. Image courtesy of Laura Schmahmann.

Crown Fountain, Millennium Park. Image courtesy of Laura Schmahmann.