Parks in Parking Spaces

  • Every other day of the year, this little green oasis in Brooklyn is a parking space. (Photo by Norah Flaherty)

On September 18th, thousands of
people around the world will spend
the day sitting in parking spaces –
without their cars – as part of an
annual event called “Parking Day.”
The idea is to spark a conversation
about how we’re using our public spaces.
Nora Flaherty attended
last year’s Parking Day, and here’s
what she found:

Transcript

On September 18th, thousands of
people around the world will spend
the day sitting in parking spaces –
without their cars – as part of an
annual event called “Parking Day.”
The idea is to spark a conversation
about how we’re using our public spaces.
Nora Flaherty attended
last year’s Parking Day, and here’s
what she found:

(sound of park)

Last year at about this time, this little park on a busy Brooklyn
corner was packed. Packed with people like freelance writer Karen
Sherman. She was sitting cross-legged in the grass and just
beaming.

“Amazing! And the sun’s out and it’s this beautiful fall day and I
wish we could do it every day.”

But she couldn’t have done it every day— that little park was
temporary. Every other day of the year it’s a parking space.

In New York City last year, there were more than 50 parking day
parks – some with grass and fences, some with tents and lawn
chairs. And they didn’t just spring up overnight – as much as it
might have looked that way.

A few days before last year’s parking day, planning was underway
at a Brooklyn coffee house.

“So how long do we think it’s going to take to set up?”

Sod needed transporting, city permits needed confirming, and—
because of New York City’s unusual parking regulations—the
parking place had to be staked out at 3 am.

Anne Pope is the director of Sustainable Flatbush – the
organization that put together the parking-spot park in Brooklyn.
She says although Flatbush is one of the greenest neighborhoods in
Brooklyn, there aren’t a lot of public, green places where people
can just go and hang out.

“If you walk around the neighborhood you’ll say, ‘wow there’s so
much greenery and green space,’ but if it doesn’t happen to be
attached to a house you own you can’t access it.”

(sound of child fingerpainting)

So on Parking Day last year, parking spaces did become a place to
hang out, for adults, and for kids like brother and sister Quinn
Isreal and Yusuf Francis.

Quinn: “Whoa, Yusuf, you’re pushing me.”

Yusuf: “Whoopsie, sorry.”

Quinn: “It’s okay.”
They had just moved here from Georgia, and Quinn said this park,
with its soft grass, was a nice change from New York’s mostly
concrete playgrounds.

“‘Cause usually in parks when you fall you hurt yourself, but in
this park you don’t hurt yourself if you fall down, you’re going to
fall down on the grass.”

Now, finding a parking space on any day in New York City is
competitive.

Matt Shafer is with the Trust for Public Land – they were one of
the major sponsors of last year’s Parking Day. He says that not
everyone is thrilled to find they can’t find a place to put their car
because people are hanging out in parking spaces.

“Some people don’t quite grasp the concept of parking day; that’s
perfectly fine. In most cases it’s, ‘why are you taking up our
parking space?’”

For some people, though, the biggest disappointment is that the
little parking space park is gone the next day. Keka Marzigal is
with Sustainable Flatbush.

“A kid came by after school and he said, ‘this is so fun, we can
come here tomorrow and do our homework!’ and it really got me!”

There was no tomorrow for that little park. But, that kid might just
find another one this year as more people convert parking spaces
into parks for a day.

For The Environment Report, I’m Nora Flaherty.

Related Links

A New Way to Grow Your Breakfast

  • Brook Wilke and his son, Charlie, visit a test farm at The Kellogg Biological Research Station. Wilke and other researchers are testing how well perennial versions of popular grain crops, such as wheat, will grow in Michigan. The test farm isn't too far from Battle Creek, the home of the commercial breakfast cereal industry. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

If you had a bowl of cereal or maybe a muffin this morning, you ate flour from an annual crop. They grow one season, they die, then get re-planted again the next year. Sounds as natural as could be, but repetitive planting can wear out farmland. It can cause soil erosion and cause more water pollution. Now, some scientists are trying to coax grain crops into growing for years at a time. Shawn Allee visited researchers who are testing perennial wheat in the heart of cereal country:

Transcript

If you had a bowl of cereal or maybe a muffin this morning, you ate flour from an annual crop. They grow one season, they die, then get re-planted again the next year. Sounds as natural as could be, but repetitive planting can wear out farmland. It can cause soil erosion and cause more water pollution. Now, some scientists are trying to coax grain crops into growing for years at a time. Shawn Allee visited researchers who are testing perennial wheat in the heart of cereal country:

I’ve headed to a test farm run by Michigan State University. It’s not that
far from Battle Creek,
Michigan where cereal companies like Kelloggs got started.

Dr. Sieg Snapp shows me grain that might make into our cereal bowls
someday.

Allee: “What are we looking at on this side?”

Snapp: “We have 6 varieties of perennial wheat.”

Right now, they kinda look like spindly blades of grass. But in some ways,
this is miraculous; regular
wheat dies after harvest. These have been harvested, and now they’re
popping back up.

“We’ll harvest these this summer, and then in the fall, they’ll re-grow.
They build a deep root
system, and they’re able to come back. So, at first, they start off very
similar, but they keep
growing longer, and they re-grow after harvest. That’s the real
difference.”

Actually, that’s just the start of the difference between annual grains
like wheat and perennial
varieties.

Dr. Snapp says when farmers plant most annual grain crops, soil gets torn
up again and again from
planting and replanting. Rain can wash away exposed top-soil.

Perennial crops get planted once every few years, so they might hold soil
and they might need less
fertilizer that runs off into streams and rivers.

Snapp: “So, the roots of traditional crops including annual wheat are
usually 1-2 feet. These
root systems might be down 6 feet. They can use fertilizers more
efficiently, so they can pick
it up from deep and then move it up where we want it, into the grain.”

Allee: “And if the roots are deep enough, you might need less herbicide
to kill weeds, right?
If that perennial wheat comes up strong enough, it’s already out-competing
the weeds that
are next to it?”

Snapp: “Right, and each year it should do it better for a couple years at
least, we don’t know
how long.”

Dr. Snapp and her colleagues use the word “maybe” a lot when they talk
about perennial grains. It’s
mostly because testing these crops is slow work. That’s one reason they’re
letting some farmers run
their own small tests.

She introduces me to one farmer.

“Hi John! Come on over!”

Part-time farmer and teacher John Edgerton says he checked his test batches
recently.

“I didn’t know what to expect and I went out there and low and behold,
it’s greening up
beautifully. In fact, now, it may be a little too thick. We’ll see.”

Edgerton wants to know whether sheep can get cheap feed from leftover wheat
grass, or whether
farmers could save on tractor fuel.

“One farmer said to me, you know, if I could get three or four years of a
decent crop of
perennial wheat without having to plow, there’d be enormous savings.”

Pretty soon, another perennial wheat researcher joins us in the test field.
He’s Brook Wilke.

He tells me, all this work on perennial wheat and other grains will work
best if the final product, the
grain, tastes like what we’re used to.

Allee: “I hear you baked some chocolate chip cookies with perennial
wheat.”

Wilke: “Yeah. A big component of this work is, “’will people eat the
perennial wheat?’”

Dr. Snapp tasted Wilke’s cookies. She says the wheat tasted kinda nutty,
but good.

Dr. Snapp says maybe one day, she and other researchers will prove
perennial grain plants can thrive.
After that, maybe bread or cereal companies, like Kellogs, will run
taste-tests of their own.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links