From Parking Lot to Park
Observe how Los Angeles has transformed one set of downtown parking lots into a new community gathering place, then discuss with your team: are there places in your own city that should be converted in a similar way?
In downtown Los Angeles, twelve acres of parking lots became Grand Park — 'the Park for Everyone,' with magenta 'park pink' benches, a restored fountain, lawns, and a playground linking City Hall to the Disney Concert Hall. Land once used to store empty cars now gathers thousands of people.
Key concepts
- Land Reclamation
- Taking land given over to cars and returning it to people — the reverse of paving paradise; Grand Park reclaimed parking lots as public space, a move cities worldwide increasingly make.
- Highest And Best Use
- What a piece of land is most valuably used for — a downtown lot can store cars or gather a community, and Grand Park bets that here a park serves the city far better than parking.
- The Third Place
- A free, shared gathering spot that's neither home nor work, where a community's life happens — a park is a classic one; a parking lot is the opposite, somewhere you pass through alone.
- Place-making
- Deliberately designing space to create identity and draw people together — Grand Park's signature 'park pink' furniture gives it a recognizable, welcoming character rather than generic blankness.
What to know
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01
Every parking lot is a choice disguised as a default — the same downtown acre can store cars or gather a crowd, so a city's real priorities are written, literally, in what it chooses to pave. Converting a lot makes an invisible value judgment visible.
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