PARK(ing) Day 2015 Design Competition
- July 26, 2015
Is there a street or intersection that you use on a regular basis that feels unsafe? Do you have ideas for how things like sidewalks, bike lanes, curb bulbs, pedestrian crossings, or traffic calming could be added? Submit your ideas for how you'd like to see the street changed, even if you're unable to commit to doing a PARK(ing) Day event.
PARK(ing) Day is an annual international event that gives people the opportunity to bring much-needed human space to asphalt. Last year, members of NE Seattle Greenways and University Greenways took advantage of PARK(ing) Day 2014 to successfully redesign a bridge, intersection, and adjacent road, making it feel safer and more comfortable for all users.
Seattle Neighborhood Greenways wants to help encourage others to do the same, so we're working with NE Seattle Greenways to host a design competition in advance of this year's PARK(ing) Day!
We will award prizes to our three favorite design proposals. More importantly, your ideas will be publicized, and we will help you with permitting and materials to get them implemented on PARK(ing) Day, for another event, or even permanently.
Your design proposal doesn't have to be fancy. It can be anything from a rough drawing on paper, to a http://streetmix.net design, to a full-fledged presentation with rendered drawings and traffic impact models. Use the tools that you're most comfortable with. The important thing is that you identify a problem on the street, and come up with a clever (or maybe obvious!) way to fix it.
The deadline for submittals is Sunday, August 16. Read full Competition Details below.
PARK(ing) Day 2015 Design Competition Details:
- The deadline for submittal your proposal is *August 16th*. Submit as many proposals as you want. Feel free to re-submit proposals as well (up until the deadline), as you tweak things during the process.
- Each proposal must be in PDF (.pdf), Microsoft Word (.docx), or Open Office (.odt) format. Please do not submit files larger than 15 megabytes.
- Anything that is submitted to us will be under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY). We want to be able to share your work online and with the Seattle Department of Transportation. We want to be able to make tweaks as needed. You and your team will be credited, but we need the flexibility to make these projects actually happen. If you don't agree with this license, DO NOT SUBMIT A PROPOSAL (though email us and let us know why, and maybe we can work around it).
- Email your design proposals and/or questions to Andres Salomon andres.salomon@seattlegreenways.org. Make sure to include your contact information! If you want your name/contact information to be public, put it in the PDF file. If you don't want it to be public, just include it in the body of the email.
- Prizes include a 24-hour Pronto! free bike share pass, a $10 Central Cinema dinner/movie gift certificate, and a $50 Recycled Cycles gift certificate.
- Projects are limited to the Seattle city limits.
- Judging will be heavily biased towards designs that address a serious problem, have detailed solutions, and are cheap or quick to implement. Be sure to describe WHY and WHAT problems your fix addresses. Suggest a fix that involves repainting something instead of rebuilding it from scratch. Let us know what materials you'd expect to use to implement a temporary version of your fix.
- However (and this is very important for the non-designers out there!), even if you don't have a good idea of how to fix a problem, please do submit the problem in a proposal. You might not win the contest, but any number of groups (including your local Greenways group, your local community council, another advocacy group, or maybe even the city) might come up with a solution and decide to try it out in the near future.
- We cannot guarantee winners will have their solutions implemented on PARK(ing) Day, but we will try. We will also try to use solutions that we like for other events. Summer Parkways is a perfect example. If your proposal addresses an issue along a Summer Parkways route, we will look at getting a temporary installation done for the event. Bike To Work Day is another example of an event when your project could be implemented. Don't feel limited to PARK(ing) Day!
- Your design can be drawn very simply, as long as you explain its location and purpose. Andres has a "back of the envelope" submittal of his successful 2014 PARK(ing) Day installation: http://lunge.queued.net/~
dilinger/IMG_20150726_011050. jpg. Andres also drew his design on a computer that is simple yet descriptive: https://twitter.com/ NEGreenways/status/ 507397845402411008. What is most important is a description of why the intersection is a problem, what materials you might want to use to implement the project on PARK(ing) Day, and measurements you'd use. These details would earn you more points than just a picture alone and will lead to a winning entry. Here is Andres' example of the reasons for his street fix: http://lunge.queued.net/~ dilinger/cowen.pdf
