Whose rights to the city? Parklets, parking, and university engagement in urban placemaking

Abstract

Streetscapes are among the urban geographies shaped by people’s belonging in place and movements through the spaces-between. Such geographies give expression to powerful ideas about rights to the city. Witness international PARK(ing) Day, during which people playfully reclaim on-street parking areas by displacing vehicles and creating parklets. Yet, parklets have been criticised when their installation results in long-term loss of parking spaces. The purpose of this paper is to analyse such contestation in a case that involved a university undergoing significant transformations. As part of its place-making strategy, the university sought to create a parklet on a municipal streetside in a central business district near new purpose-built student accommodation. In short order, the idea was protested by particular stakeholders in the city, and the university later withdrew the municipal development application. As drawn out in our analysis of news reports and comments, the significance of the case is that the parklet was a casualty of deep divisions about who has rights to the city and about the functions of universities. Such divisions also exist in cities around the world and arguably undermine small actions to support decarbonising futures and caring infrastructures that attend urgently needed larger social and environmental gains.