Kaleb Duarte (front) and a fellow Knowlton student working to build the parklet to be displayed at Pearl Alley Jam | Credit: Josephine Pajemola | Lantern Reporter
A parking spot redesigned to be a space for people to gather will be displayed this weekend as a part of International Park(ing) Day, a day to build parklets, in University District through a community collaboration spearheaded by Knowlton Society, a student advocacy organization.
The parklet, the first to come from Ohio State’s school of architecture, has been designed, organized and advertised by students in collaboration with various community organizations. The parklet will be displayed on Sept. 18-19 at the Pearl Alley Jam, a block party on University Square that showcases the culture of creativity in Columbus.
“Our roads are our largest public spaces, and people cannot set foot on them without feeling unsafe,” Kaleb Duarte, a fourth-year in architecture, head organizer of the parklet project and a co-founder of Knowlton Society, said. “A parklet extends that public realm to make people feel safe and welcome and have fun in the process.”
The 21-foot-wide structure features overhead covering, with benches and chairs underneath for people to sit in the shade. It also features a bike rack, according to the renders of the project.
A photo of one of the renders of the parklet, featurting a bike rack, benches and chairs for people to sit. Credit: Courtesy of Kaleb Duarte
Also called “Pearl Alley Cram,” the parklet will serve as not just a place to gather, but also as a donation spot for bike parts for Bikes For All People, a non-profit bicycle shop, Duarte said.
Duarte added that the idea for a parklet came to them and D’Laveance Bert-Sims, a third-year studying city and regional planning and public management, leadership and policy, when they noticed benches missing in many COTA bus stops across the University District.
Instead of the expensive answer of building benches and distributing, the two came upon a parklet, something that would motivate people to envision a better urban environment while staying cost-effective, Duarte said.
Over the summer, Duarte reached out to various community organizations, including Transit Columbus – a transit advocacy organization – and? University District Organization, which is a community improvement organization that organizes Pearl Alley Jam.
Both organizations are within the university and in the greater metropolitan area. Durate said that they reached out to the organizations to begin a grassroots initiative to design and implement a parklet.
“Knowlton Society and Transit Columbus, throughout the summer, had community meetings to talk about what is a parklet, how it should be designed, in what way do we want people to interact with it,” Nora Gerber, executive director of University District Organization, said. “All of those sessions were always open to the public.”
Gerber said there was always as much community input as possible in the process of designing and implementing the parklet.
The parklet that will be shown at Pearl Alley Jam is not just one architecture student’s idea, but rather the culmination of a community coming together, Duarte said.
“This is not just an art project, an architecture project,” Duarte said. “It’s a community project.”
Knowlton Society is also partnering with Strong Towns Columbus and Buckeyes for Transit, both organizations that focus on making cities safer and more accessible for residents.
Twenty-five percent of Columbus’s downtown area is solely dedicated to parking spaces currently, not including roads, Duarte said.
“A parklet is a protest,” Duarte said. “[It] is a protest of the fact that our cities have alienated everyday people from inhabiting our public space.”
This parklet is a way to show the Columbus community there is a safer, more sustainable alternative, Lance White, the president of Buckeyes for Transit and a third-year in city and regional planning, said.
“A lot of advocates call it exposing the water to the fish,” White said. “So many people are just so used to how we currently design our transportation system that a lot of people just aren’t really aware that there are better options.”
The funding for this project was provided through the Ohio State Undergraduate Student Government.
Chris Cade, the USG president and third-year in public policy analysis, political science and public policy and management, met with Duarte and was introduced to the plan to build a parklet. The USG funded the project as part of their budget process, Cade said.
“USG is funding it totally, and I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to, one, raise awareness about space revitalization, but also to connect students to something that’s not necessarily on campus, but still affects students,” Cade said.
The parklet will be assembled on 15th Avenue in University Square at 5:30 p.m. on Friday and can be used throughout the weekend.
“[The parklet] is taking matters into your own hands to see a future that is better,” Duarte said. “That’s ultimately what the parklet is.”
This article was updated at 12:53p.m. to correct USG’s involvement with the project.
