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/.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about Park(ing) Day in the context of one of my favorite art works/public space interventions, Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake Estates. In the early 1970s Matta-Clark bought up a number of parcels of land being auctioned off by the City.  These small and awkwardly shaped pre-development plots were animated simply through Matta-Clark’s taking an interest in them.  His purchase of the land transformed the so-called remnant “gutterscapes” into new artzones with unlimited potential energy.  Though Matta-Clark died before he was able to actualize his vision for Fake Estates, the project raises all sorts of questions about types of space in the City and what they can (or should) be, and about the very notion of land ownership.

While Park(ing) Day is more in the spirit of sharing than owning, I think the ambition is parallel.  Just as Gordon Matta-Clark challenged New York’s patterns of (over)development by becoming an NYC land owner, there’s something slightly transgressive about parking yourself in a parking spot for an afternoon.  It implicitly questions the supremacy of the car and the time, space and money forked over to perpetuate that supremacy. 

Last year at the Center for Architecture we collaborated with Common Room, one of our 2008 New Practices winners, to create a satellite meeting/public interface space.  Passers-by were encouraged to engage firm members and the day ended up as a free-and-easy dialogue about the built environment.

By Jonah Stern

Every few days or so I sit on the corner of Fulton and South Portland with a man who sells coconut water and juices, a Nigerian clothing designer who always dresses in his best wares, a slick personal shopper, an elder mystic who smokes cloves, and a few other quality gentlemen who have their eye on livable streets. We discuss politics, religion, and the weather, anything that strikes our fancy. One must come prepared, your arguments will be sliced and diced, no malice, but one must come prepared – this is what we love to do on our street.

Every member of our group has a chair. The chairs are locked against the Lafayette Ave. C train stop and kept there by the gentleman biker who struts around with an English accent, spectacles, and the tight curls of a Caribbean born, English bred, and American made black man.  The assortment is a who’s who of what it means to be a NY’er – international, well-read, interesting, they may be millionaires or homeless, - no one knows, on the street level it only matters that they are unafraid of redefining space and making a little oasis out of a small strip of concrete.

This is what Park(ing) Day is about to me: looking at what you do on your streets; playing, dancing, talking, unching, people watching, and taking that idea into the physical – making those activities accessible for everyone. Redefining streets.

Some of the things we talk about will fade into history, others, recall our early days as youth struggling to stay cool in the muggy heat of the street and doing our best.

My good buddy Tyler Askew, the multi-talented designer and art director living in NYC said when asked about what makes a public space healthy and safe, “trees, vegetation, ample sidewalk space, and lighting at night.”

Ranjit Bhagwat at the Clinical Psychology Program at Rutgers University where he is pursuing a PhD, says he loves it when he has “a corner store and a decent bar and a small park.”

We are listening. The city is listening. Designers, artists, architects, small vendors, bikers, pedestrians alike are crowing over their small spaces of concrete, are all listening. If you are stuck for ideas, I encourage you to make your way to your favorite corner, after work, and sit, talk, and mingle with a few like minded and challenging friends. For ideas for your Park on Park(ing) Day do a local audit, a scan, and review, see what the vision is for your community – and determine what ways you can personally help to manifest a slice of that vision for all of us to share.

We do it everyday on Fulton and South Portland.

Ibrahim Abdul-Matin