We have some amazing spaces already planned and want to see more! If you are in the planning stages of hosting a Park(ing) Spot for Park(ing) Day NYC we suggest you take a quick moment to register online! Registration allows Transportation Alternatives to request your City Permit and print your gorgeous Park(ing) Day Sign. We will also promote your space through printed maps and our website. Registering your spot means choosing the location, but you still have the beginning of September to work out the details. The final deadline for Park(ing) Spot registrations is MONDAY AUGUST 30TH!

Thanks for being a part of this amazing street reclamation event!

We need your help to make Park(ing) Day NYC a success!  Make a donation of any amount on our Kickstarter page and you’ll get a free gift, plus our sincerest gratitude.  Please give if you’re able to and pass the word on to your friends!

And very soon we’ll have some amazing interviews with past Park(ing) Day NYC participants and organizers from other Park(ing) Day cities up on the blog.  Stay tuned!

We are so excited to announce that Park(ing) Spot hosts can now register online for Park(ing) Day NYC 2010!

Our website is currently undergoing some updates but in the mean time you can register to host a Park(ing) Spot here. As always you’ll need to select your spot and gather some information before registering, so check out the How-To Guide! Also, the Department of Transportation has an online database of parking regulations for New York City so you can find out the parking rules at your spot here.

We hope that past Park(ing) Spot hosts will join us again this year. Your amazing creativity and hard work makes this event happen year after year. And if you know of other organizations or individuals who would be interested in hosting a Park(ing) Spot please send them our way!

If you have any questions or need some inspiration for your Park(ing) Spot please contact us at info@parkingdaynyc.org

Here at Transportation Alternatives we’re getting very excited for Park(ing) Day NYC 2010! Mark your calendars for Friday September 17th, 2010.

In the coming weeks the website will be up to date and registration will be live. As in years past, Park(ing) Day NYC aims to transform parking spaces into people-friendly public spaces supporting everything from playgrounds to community meeting places, urban gardens to small sculpture parks, performance stages to relaxing respites. Park(ing) Day NYC is an opportunity for community advocates, environmentalists, artists and NYC residents to re-create our urban landscape and reinvent public street space.

In the coming weeks we will be posting interviews with past Park(ing) Day NYC participants about their Park(ing) Day experiences and their ideas on public space in New York. We’ll also talk to other Park(ing) Day cities about how this event has changed their public discourse on urban space. Have an idea for a blog post? Let us know at alyssa@transalt.org.

Fixcity.org is amazing! It is a pro-active approach to all those frustrating moments when you find yourself standing on the street, muttering where the #$% is a bike rack! Now you can request racks for all those locations.

Here’s a recap of the day told to us by spot organizer Lacey Tauber and photo by Dan Latorre:

The Open Planning Project, the TA Brooklyn Committee, and local community advocacy group NAG (Neighbors Allied for Good Growth) teamed up on Park(ing) Day to present a new website, FixCity.org Bike Racks. FixCity.org is an online platform communities can use to map desired bike rack locations. The pilot neighborhood is Greenpoint-Williamsburg so we set up our Park(ing) Space at Bedford and North 7th Street, right by the Bedford Avenue L train. Using a solar-powered laptop charger borrowed from our friends at Solar One, we premiered the site to passersby who used the interactive mapping tool to request new bike rack locations in the neighborhood. The goal of the site is to ultimately present 300 new, fully vetted bike rack orders to the Department of Transportation. If this pilot project is successful, the tool can be used citywide!

In addition to promoting FixCity, we also gave “bike therapy,” handing out TA’s Biking Rules guide, and promoting the upcoming Biking Rules PSA Festival!

Check out more photos from the hosts’ Flickr accounts:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neotint/3933431672/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51452761@N00/sets/72157622285501143/

Park(ing) Day NYC: to-do-to-do

Let’s rock peoples’ minds and inspire them to re-envision their streets!  The following guidelines will help you do just that and make Park(ing) Day NYC stress-free, fun, well-documented, conscientious and connected:

1. Bring your required materials

In addition to the materials you’re using for your spot, you must have the following at your park:

1. Street Activity Permit (to show NYPD or anyone else questioning your space’s legality—also very useful for asking car idlers to move and let you park-it)

1. Official Sign (so people know this is a public space that they can participate in)

1. Park(ing) Day NYC Maps (listing all the spots in the City – for you to distribute)

**Pick up these required materials at T.A.’s office—127 W. 26^th Street (between 6^th and 7^th Avenues), 10^th Floor—TODAY, September 17^th, from 8am-7pm.***

2. Keep it legal

Make sure your spot is in a legal parking space. “Spots” can not be in places that impede other people’s way or put visitors in danger: no crosswalks, bike lanes, fire hydrants, driveways, no standing anytime zones and bus stops.

3. Document your hard work, your ingenious creation and the experience of passers-by!

1. Photos: Take a bunch throughout the day, and upload to your account at parkingdaynyc.org and tag more with “parkingdaynyc” on Flickr. There’s also a Park(ing) Day NYC Flickr group that you can join and add photos to.
2. Tweet, tweet!: Send your park(ing) spots status updates via text message to nvfxtj(at)twittermail(dot)com. You can also receive text message parkingdaynyc twitter updates from other spots by signing up for a Twitter account online.
3. Video: Can you take some? Please send us your digital files and upload to YouTube after the event.  Cell phone, digital camera or flip camera quality is perfect.
4. The Blog: Send us write-ups about your spot and the planning process, or exciting occurrences throughout the day to info(at)parkingdaynyc.org .

4. Leave No Trace

This saying has just as much sway in our urban environment as it does when hiking in the rural wilderness.  Please collect or discard any trash or items left in your spot at the end of the day.

If you read today’s StreetBeat you may have heard - POP.Park finalist entries will be included in a workshop at the upcoming Conflux Festival. Conflux is an annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice.

At Conflux, people from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures come together to re-imagine the city as a playground, a space for positive change and an opportunity for civic engagement. It’s the perfect place to talk about Park(ing) Day and POP.Park.

Friday September 18, Park(ing) Day, T.A. will host an interactive, mobile workshop to discuss Park(ing) Day NYC, POP.Park and other creative ways to re-define our streets as places for people and not just cars. T.A. will lead a tour from the festival to the POP.Parks - set-up at a secret location in the city. (check back soon for more information)

This year’s Conflux Festival starts on September 17 and runs through September 20. Join us in building the dialogue about NYC’s valuable public space and how we choose to use it. For more information, schedules and a complete list of participants, go to http://confluxfestival.org/2009/.

Park(ing) Day NYC is seeking architects, designers and artists interested in collaborating with community groups to produce Park(ing) Spots in collaboration with NYC community groups. These spots will be inventive proof-of-concept for street space reclamation, and are also eligible to receive a larger mini-grant. Contact us for more information.

Thanks to the enormous success of last year’s 25 Park(ing) Spots, the decision has been made to double the number of spots we’re funding this year to 50! With twice as many Park(ing) Spots, we’re hoping to put them in neighborhoods across the 5 boroughs.

But we need your help! If you know of a person, organization, firm, practice, corporation, or extra-terrestrial that you think would be interested in building a Park(ing) Spot in their neighborhood, let them know! Or, better yet, build one yourself!