PubliCity is an initiative that aims to involve the community to celebrate good public spaces and to enliven public spaces through good design and programmes. Public spaces are important components of our living environment. The creation and development of well-designed public spaces provide areas for people to gather for social activities and serve as leisure and recreational spaces. As part of urban planning and design, public spaces are carefully planned and distributed across the island. PubliCity strives to create both new public spaces as well as rejuvenate existing ones.
PARK(ing) Day, the international event that invites the public to turn parking lots into temporary public spaces for all to enjoy is returning to Singapore this year, on Friday, 18th September, for a third edition.
This one-day event is part of the worldwide PARK(ing) Day movement, when people in different cities transform parking lots into temporary public spaces, or ‘PARKs’. These temporary PARKs are an invitation to re-imagine the use of spaces for leisure, and can range from a mini public beach to a teh-tarik stand.
This year, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and Housing Development Board (HDB) are continuing their support of the event in Singapore by making car park lots available to participants. Interested participants can choose to set up their ‘PARKs’ in any URA coupon-paid parking lot across the island, as well as selected HDB coupon-paid parking lots in the Tiong Bahru area.
Some suggested locations which the public can PARK in, include:
Refer to Annex A [PDF, 888kb] for maps of each of these locations.
Interested participants need to register with the URA to create a ‘PARK’. Once accepted, they will receive a specially-designed parking coupon to reserve a parking lot and waive the parking fees for these ‘PARKS’.
"More than 50 community groups, local businesses, students, and individuals took part in PARK(ing) Day last year, and the creativity and the effort they put in to create their ‘PARKs’ were very impressive. The public also had fun visiting and interacting with the PARKs. This year, we hope more people will join PARK(ing) Day and help spread the green message in a fun way,” said Ng Lang, Chief Executive Officer of URA.
Singapore first participated in PARK(ing) Day in 2013 as part of the ArchiFest fringe festival. Back then, students from the Singapore University of Technology and Design transformed four car park lots at MacPherson Estate into community gardens.
In 2014, with URA and HDB’s support, PARK(ing) Day took place on an island-wide scale for the first time with the two agencies offering the public the opportunity to make use of the parking lots under their management as temporary public parks. A total of 52 ‘PARKs’ across 88 parking lots were created at various locations, such as the Central Business District, Jalan Besar and Tiong Bahru. Refer to Annex B [PDF, 1mb] for examples of ‘PARKs’ implemented last year.
URA is supporting PARK(ing) Day under its PubliCity programme which aims to involve the community in celebrating and enlivening public spaces through good design and programmes.
Interested participants can visit the PubliCity website, select a parking lot, and submit an idea of what they would like to do in the temporary public space. Registration opens from today to 14 September 2015. To register, log on to ura.sg/parkingday #PubliCitySG
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