Grass, Trees And Shrubs To Sprout For A Day In Nashville Parking Spaces

This parking space on Lower Broad was turned into a sort of al fresco lounge during last year’s event. Source: Nashville Civic Design Center

There will be fewer places to park a car on Friday in some of Nashville’s most heavily-trafficked areas. For the second year in a row, the city is participating in an international day of taking metered spaces out of circulation and using them instead as miniature, temporary urban parks.

Park(ing) Day started in 2005 when a San Fransisco art gallery fed the meter for two hours, and filled the parking spot with sod, a potted tree and a park bench. Now, it’s an annual event in nearly a thousand parking spots worldwide. Ron Yearwood of the Nashville Civic Design Center says the point is to question how urban space is used.

“Our main street on Broadway, the sidewalks are so small yet they’re so congested with people, it kind of allows people to start thinking what if these sidewalks were larger or what if we had these little parks.”

Last year, about ten of Nashville’s metered parking spots became mini-parks. This time, thirty spaces will contain things like seating, greenery, or lawn games. Normally, it would cost $450 to feed those meters all day, but he city is donating the parking spots and waiving their time limits.

The spaces will be available for parking again on Saturday.

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Here’s a Google map of participating Park(ing) Day parking spaces in Nashville:

View Park(ing)Day 2013, Nashville, TN in a larger map

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