[Editor's Note: Former Vancouver reporter Christine McLaren is travelling around the world as the resident blogger for the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a mobile think tank investigating solutions to urban problems. This week the project wraps up its three-month run in New York City -- which featured programming by Vancouver author Charles Montgomery -- and will travel next to Berlin, and on to Mumbai. This story originally appeared on the Lab's blog, the Lab|log.] Last week I posted the story of my dream urban pilgrimage—a journey I recently made to the first post–World War II American sprawl suburb, Levittown. I wrote that I was caught off guard by how benevolent the residential sections of Levittown seemed when compared with the modern sprawling suburban neighborhoods that were modeled after it. It cannot be ignored, however, that the commercial strips within and surrounding Levittown nonetheless suffer from the same problem that sprawling suburban outposts do—the hollow lifelessness of a car-oriented landscape.

Today, Friday, September 16th, is PARK(ing) Day! In cities around the globe, artists, activists and citizens will transform metered parking spaces into temporary public parks and other social spaces, as part of the annual event. PARK(ing) Day invites people to rethink the way streets are used and promotes discussion around the need for broad- based changes to urban infrastructure. In recent years, PARK(ing) Day has inspired city governments to create legal mechanisms to extend the public realm into the parking lane. In San Francisco, the Pavement to Parks “Parklet” program provides a permit system for businesses, community groups and individuals to transform metered parking spaces into small “parklets” that are open to the public. In New York City the “pop up café” program offers similar permit system for local cafes wishing to offer sidewalk service. A listing of events scheduled for Canadian cities follows. For more information, visit the PARK(ing) Day project website.

[caption id="attachment_11826" align="alignleft" width="290" caption="Image courtesy of the UBC LARC502B class"][/caption] This is the second part of a series - in tandem with In Focus: The Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts photo essay - looking at the past, present and future of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts. By Brian Gould and Erick Villagomez, re:place Magazine

[caption id="attachment_11901" align="alignleft" width="290" caption="Image of Urban Pulse proposal for Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts. Courtesy of UBC's LARC502B Landscape Architecture studio class."][/caption] This is the third and final part of a series - in tandem with In Focus photo essays - looking at the past, present and future of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts. By Brian Gould and Erick Villagomez, re:place Magazine