Type: Community Engagement
Site: Manchester Ave, Maplewood, MO
Event: PARK(ing) Day 2015
Firm: SWT Design, St. Louis
September 18, 2015
What if we devoted as much space to people-scaled facilities as we do to vehicular facilities?
Our strategy for this year’s PARK(ing) Day is tailored to local urban conditions. Here in the St. Louis metro area, we live in a car-centric culture. Our dependency on automobiles has led to an abundance of vehicular facilities, such as parking spaces, at the expense of both more human-scaled, occupiable spaces and high performance urban ecosystem sites. In an attempt to engage citizens where are most likely to find them—in their cars—we have chosen to site our intervention on a busy arterial road. We want to speak loudly and boldly to multiple scales of “traffic”. We want to challenge the average car commuter to reduce the impact they have on our environment by shifting their commute to bike, walk, ride-share, or take mass transit. For those using active and mass forms of transportation, we want to learn more. We aim to find out why they walk or ride and how it impacts their lives. We will encourage a community exchange of the knowledge, data, and personal experience that each one of us can use spread the word about the positive impact the reduction of auto-related infrastructure will have on our region.
View our flyer, here: Less is More