Grab Your Camera. It’s #BlackFridayParking Time Again…but with a Quarantine Twist.
Given how much off-street parking cities require retail businesses to provide, they must have the busiest shopping day of the year in mind. Traditionally in the United States, that’s been Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. The problems with this approach are manifold, and we’ve covered them extensively over the years. But the tragic irony is that, even on Black Friday, many of those lots remain unfilled. That’s how overbuilt we are on parking.
So every year, to bring attention the wastefulness of parking minimums, scores of folks around the United States and Canada head out on Black Friday to take photos of half-empty parking lots. They post them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook using the hashtag #BlackFridayParking. Strong Towns started this crowdsourced campaign in 2013 and its become a viral phenomenon beyond what we expected.
Of course, 2020 is unique. Far fewer people will be out shopping today. Yet, if anything, 2020 is the exception that proves the rule. Think of the sea of asphalt in your town or city. Consider how much of it sits empty 364 or even 365 days per year. Now imagine the many ways it could have been put to more productive use all this time—to shore up local economies, to be used for housing or small businesses, to provide more space for people to get outside to safely walk and bike while social distancing.
This year, we’re doing #BlackFridayParking a little differently. We want to know what you’d like to see instead of all that parking in your city. And because parking minimums are applied not just to retail, but also to other types of businesses, churches and nonprofits, and residences, don’t feel restricted to empty parking lots at big box stores and shopping malls. As Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges wrote on Monday—public, private, any sort of use is fair game. “Show us a place where there’s too much parking, but more importantly, tell us (or even illustrate for us, if you’re artistically inclined!) exactly what we’re missing out on by not taking a more flexible, adaptable approach to that space.”
So here’s what we’re asking folks to do this year:
Get outside and take pictures of excessive or underused parking in your town.
Upload your photos to Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #blackfridayparking AND the hashtag #iwishthisparkingwas . And then let us know, in an image or in the caption, exactly what you’d do with that parking lot that would create more value for your community. (Housing? Offices? Park? You decide!)
If you want to go further, get creative: use an app on your phone or computer to help people visualize just how much parking there it is…and how it can be used to generate wealth and resilience instead. (See these examples from Daniel Herriges.)
Check out other peoples' photos from across the country below. We’ll also be posting a few of our favorites on the Strong Towns site later in the day.