The Chronicle’s urban design writer John King, consistently one of the paper’s best writers, today took a celebratory look at the parklets that have been springing up around town, calling them, “the most intriguing urban design innovation in today’s San Francisco.” I agree with that sentiment, and so does the crowd that showed up on Sunday to dedicate “the Deeplet,” the first such parklet in front of a residential property.
It was a collaboration between homeowner Amandeep “Deep” Jawa, his girlfriend Kimberly Conley, and designer Jane Martin, who King quotes in his piece (which only Chron subscribers and read until Sunday when it goes public). The idea is to take underutilized space from automobiles and give it back to people.
Livable City director Tom Radulovich also spoke at the event, talking about how the streets were traditionally the gathering and social spaces in cities, until transportation planners started to value the efficient movement and storage of automobiles over a more inclusive view of streets. But the parklets – along with temporary street seizures like the Sunday Streets events – are part of a movement back to a more holistic view of city spaces.
We at the Guardian have been sympathetically covering this trend for years, and it is notably one of the few areas of agreement that we’ve had with the Chronicle and former Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose administration cleared the way for the permitted creation of parklet. And on this beautiful summer day, agreeing on the importance of having places to lounge and to just be seems like a great starting point for more discussions on the future of this great city.