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R E C L A I M T H E ST R E E TS
CHAPTER 1
SAN FRANCISCO PLACES BY PEOPLE
In 2005, a San Francisco collective of artists and designers called Rebar ignited a global street intervention, which later became known as Park(ing) Day. John Bela, one of Rebar’s founders, said, “We observed that 70 percent of the right-of-way was allocated to vehicles while only 20 or 30 percent was for people on foot or bike. That just seemed like an imbalance.”1 The group decided to reclaim a small piece of the road. On a sunny weekday morning in November, Rebar members fed a downtown San Francisco parking meter and set up a temporary park with grass, a bench, and a young bay tree. There the park remained for two hours until the
meter ran out. They rolled up the sod, packed away the bench and the tree, gave the spot a sweep, and left. Bela recalled the day, saying, “When people sat down on the bench and began having a conversation, we realized it was a success.”2 Rebar wasn’t the first to reclaim San Francisco streets for pedestrians. Artist Bonnie Sherk had introduced portable parks under freeway overpasses and alleyways in the 1970s. But in 2005, the idea took off. Flooded by requests from other cities, Rebar published an open-source how-to manual empowering others to create their own installations.3 Many people were eager to see cities change, and
The first Park(ing) intervention in downtown San Francisco, which instigated Park(ing) Day (2005) (Source: John Bela)
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