This Friday September 17th, volunteers will be taking back the streets for the people – literally – when they transform various metered parking spaces in Downtown Dayton from spaces for cars into “park” spaces for people on what has become known worldwide as PARK(ing) Day! This annual event started in 2005 in San Francisco when a downtown art & design studio called Rebar converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park. Since then, PARK(ing) Day has turned into an annual open-source global event. Dayton got into the action last year when Garden Station organized the city’s first “park” in front of C{Space on Jefferson Street. This year there will be four spaces – City Hall (organized by City of Dayton staff), the main library (organized by Dayton Metro Library), Blind Bobs (organized by Garden Station) and in front of 120 N. St. Clair (organized by … wait for it…. DAYTONMOSTMETRO.COM).
The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to “call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat … at least until the meter runs out!”
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