Parking Day 2013 - 2016 - Architecture and Sustainable Design (ASD)

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Project Info

Parking Day is a community initiative by SUTD, in partnership with Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) to engage the public in rethinking our city and transforming our streetscapes into more walkable, inclusive, safer and livelier ones. Singapore had its inaugural PARK(ing) Day in 2013 when a group of ASD students worked with the community to transform a row of parking lots in MacPherson Estate to create a more pedestrian friendly street for the residents. Since then, Sutdio has been co-organizing Parking Day Jalan Besar and Singapore has seen 174 parks temporarily transformed from parking lots by community groups, local businesses, schools, students and individuals islandwide.

In 2016, Parking Day extended its outreach beyond Jalan Besar. Leading up to Parking Day, students from SUTD organized and ran a series of on-site design workshops for students in the historic neighbourhoods, Jalan Besar, Kampong Glam and Bugis, in engaging younger students in the people-centred design thinking process of envisioning the future city, and at the same time, bringing to light local issues, especially conservation of our intangible heritage, and creating safer and more pedestrian-friendly streets through the collective re-imagination of our streetscapes.

Parking Day 2016 therefore saw the largest participation from schools such as LASALLE College of the Arts, Schools of the Arts, Nanyang Polytechnic, Republic Polytechnic as well as SUTD. During the workshop, the students stepped into the urban sphere to observe and investigate the neighbourhoods, interacting with resident communities and involving them in meaningful transformations of on-site parking lots into beautiful parks and public spaces, many of which created awareness of the heritage behind our historic districts, especially the intangible – such as stories and spirit of our elderly generation.