PARK(ing) Day takes over downtown Monterey, replacing parked cars with green spaces.

Sloan Campi here, sore from doing push-ups in a parking space on Alvarado Street earlier today. 

Why was I doing push-ups in the street? There are two explanations. The first is to enter a raffle to win some free personal training sessions at the Monterey Sports Center, but the better explanation is because the City of Monterey’s Recreation Department took over street parking spaces for PARK(ing) Day from 10am to 2:30pm today, Sept. 19. 

PARK(ing) Day is when street parking spaces are repurposed for uses other than cars. The installation started in San Francisco back in 2005, where according to myparkingday.org, it has become “an annual event for people to reclaim urban space from cars.”

It’s no secret that cars are the primary mode of transportation for nearly every city in America. Because of this, there is a shared sentiment that parking is needed for businesses and communities to thrive. But, it’s contentious too. Earlier this year, my colleague Pam Marino reported on California’s Assembly Bill 413, known as the “daylighting law,” which bans any on-street parking within 20 feet of an intersection. As a result, the City of Carmel reports losing 45 parking spots. They estimate that this law will cost the city potentially over $4.8 million a year and that each parking spot in Carmel represents nearly $97,000. 

That’s a lot of money that each parking spot could potentially generate. But cars don’t actually spend money. People do. Yet we’ve built an economy around cars as if they are the sole means of ensuring a city thrives. Other modes of transportation—like bicycles, walking and public transit—are generally an afterthought for cities in the U.S. As a result, our paradigm favors the use of personal vehicles, and requires places to put them.

PARK(ing) Day flips this on its head. I asked Thys Norton, Monterey’s park operations manager, about the concept behind PARK(ing) Day on Alvarado, something that’s happened locally since 2018. “It’s meant to shed a little bit of light on open space by taking over a [parking space] and making it an open space for someone rather than the other way around,” he says.

There were a few complaints about parking spaces getting taken over by something other than cars, but for the most part there has been a lot of support. Unlike the Old Monterey Farmers Market that happens every Tuesday, which closes off Alvarado to vehicles, traffic is allowed to drive down the road during PARK(ing) Day. (What’s interesting to me is there are usually many people walking around during the farmers market.) 

What do you think? Are streets better when there are fewer cars and more people walking around? I’d like to hear your thoughts.