Students Hold Picnic in Parking Spot, Protest City's Lack of Green

Anyone who’s made a habit of running out to feed the meter knows parking spaces come at a premium in New York City.

So when several Columbia students rolled out fake grass and lawn chairs, and offered free apple cider on a parking spot on Broadway between 113th and 114th Streets last Friday, Dorothy McCullen, a resident of Morningside Heights, had reason to think “some nut will park on top of them.”

The activists that commandeered the spot on Broadway did so as part of National Park(ing) Day, an event that started in San Francisco in 2005 and expanded to cities across the country this year to raise awareness about the scarcity of green space in many urban areas.

In New York, support for National Park(ing) Day comes at a time when environmental groups across the city are galvanized by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC proposals to make the city environmentally sustainable by the year 2030­—a plan which includes the controversial proposal to charge motorists $8 to drive in Manhattan below 86th Street.

Julie Raskin, CC ’08, one of the organizers of the event said “these temporary parks are symbolic for our need for more green space in New York City and a new way to think about public space.”

“Morningside Heights has great green spaces whereas most neighborhoods are not as fortunate,” Matthew Roe, GSAPP ’08 and another event organizer, said. Most people only want to walk five to ten minutes to get to their local parks, he added. This means areas such as the South Bronx, where parks are few and far between, suffer directly from lack of green community spaces.

McCullen did not see the need for more green space, especially since many are owned privately and are fenced off to the public. “We hope that newly opened spaces will be available for the general public,” Roe said.

Along with a bass player and a gathering of concerned activists, the group sat on their lawn chairs and offered free cider from the farmers market to anyone interested. The chess players and booksellers, who are regulars to this stretch of Broadway, surrounded the temporary park, enjoying the music together.

Juliana Richard can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com