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It looked like yet another weird symptom of San Francisco tech culture: a cluster of people sitting on the side of a road, working at desks placed within the boundaries of a parking space.
But WePark—a project led by San Francisco-based web developer Victor Pontis—was actually a manifestation of an idea that has become more popular in the last few years: Cities use space inefficiently and prioritize cars over people. The people at the desks were attempting to reclaim a sliver of space for human use. "Car parking squanders space that can be used for the public good—bike lanes, larger sidewalks, retail, cafes, more housing," Pontis said. "Let's use city streets for people, not cars." (There are also WePark franchises in France as well as Santa Monica.)
Pontis said he got the idea from a Twitter exchange in which Github's Devon Zuegel pointed out that eight bicycles could fit in one park spot instead of a car. Urbanist Annie Fryman, responded, suggesting that the metered parking spot be used as a coworking space instead.
Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pajgyz/rogue-coder-turned-a-parking-spot-into-a-coworking-space
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 06 2019, @07:40PM (1 child)
Victor Pontis is in the wrong place, and very late to the game. SF has BART, the Muni, cable cars, buses, CalTrain, a bike share program, electric scooters, EV charging stations, and Critical Mass to promote biking. Private vehicles there are outre. Everybody in that town has been kicking them. So appropriating a parking space as a co-working location is not hip, cool, or inventive. It's old hat.
Also, he and his retail locations, cafes, and housing will quickly run out of stuff if he and his hipster buddies choke off the means of re-supplying them with stuff. He would know this from playing SimCity if he was a real techie: removing roads kills cities.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 06 2019, @08:28PM
Just crank up the tax rate, provide rail transport to all sectors, then bulldoze out the roads - works great, unless natural disasters are enabled.
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