Making Space: An Exploration of Parklets in North America and Vancouver
Making Space: An Exploration of Parklets in North America and Vancouver Kathleen Corey University of Guelph, 2014 Advisor: Nathan Perkins University of Guelph In the last few decades many municipalities have temporarily closed streets to vehicular traffic to open them to people and foster community. More recently, New York and San Francisco introduced pop-up parks to street rights-of-way, initially as plazas reclaimed from excess road space. On a smaller scale, ‘parklets’ are a response to people’s desires to repurpose parking stalls for community spaces. In June 2013, VIVA Vancouver launched its stand-alone Parklet Pilot Program. The parklet application and design process was examined using an action research case study method for one of the first parklets to be built under the program by PWL Partnership. San Francisco and Vancouver parklets were mapped and compared. Findings reveal that parklets begin as business sponsored projects and over time evolve into community partnerships. Recommendations have been developed for emerging and established programs across North America.
The Sociology of Urban Public Spaces
This paper identifies, through a brief review of a variety of urban spaces in France and in the USA, the street, the shopping mall, the train station, the café, the square and the garden, two main questions facing designers and scholars of public space today: How to conceive spaces that are at once accessible to everyone and which also foster a sense of shared concern, the emergence of a local public sphere?
The Politics of Public Space
George Baird is the former dean (2004-2009) of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, and is a partner in the Toronto-based architecture and urban design firm Baird Sampson Neuert Architects. Prior to becoming dean at the University of Toronto, Baird was the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. 

He is coeditor (with Charles Jencks) of Meaning in Architecture; and (with Mark Lewis) of Queues Rendezvous, Riots. He is author of Alvar Aalto and The Space of Appearance. Most recently, his researches in architectural theory have focused on the question of the political and social status of urban public space, and on debates revolving around subject of “critical architecture.” His much discussed essay “Criticality and Its Discontents” was published in the Harvard Design Magazine and his subsequent text “The Criticality Debate: Some Further Thoughts” appeared in T/A Magazine, Shanghai.

Baird’s consulting firm, Baird Sampson Neuert is the winner of numerous design awards. Baird is a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. In 1992, he received the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Architecture and Design Award and in 2000, the da Vinci Medal of the Ontario Association of Architects.