Pavement to Parks

Gene Miller sent along a well-illustrated article from the New York Times on the Pavement to Parks movement, with some good examples that we’ve featured in Price Tags. 

What jumped out at me was a project I had not heard of before – LentSpace, a temporary installation in Manhattan’s SoHo. 

Just look at the deal brokered for the recently inaugurated LentSpace on Canal, Varick, Grand and Sullivan Streets in Soho. It’s a model for citywide land use in New York and, indeed, any city or town cursed with empty lots; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council has created an “in the meantime” activity for a vacant site awaiting future development.

 

In the case of LentSpace, the developer, Trinity Real Estate, is providing a three-year lease — and receives a write-off in return. (One hopes Trinity will eventually give in to LentSpace’s request to remove the chain-link fence that still surrounds the space.)

Sounds somewhat like the community gardens that have popped up on development sites in downtown Vancouver, along with the criticism that the developers are doing this not out of altruism but for the short-term tax advantage.  Or that it will lead to conflict when the ‘public’ space is reprivatized.

Some will continue to argue that no, Trinity and others will never get their land back, that this is too complicated, too risky. I’ll argue that the alternative — to let us all live oblivious to the blight that surrounds us — isn’t a viable one. … I love the fact that this is entering into the global conversation for many reasons, not least that it acknowledges the importance of small yet impactful gestures in our daily lives, like the recent spate of public spaces, created on the cheap, and full of heart.

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