Parklets: Tiny green oases taking on the sacred car parking space
February 26, 2025
There are a few certainties in British life. Rain at Wimbledon. A government minister “focusing on the real issues.” And, of course, the absolute bedlam that ensues when a single parking space is repurposed for literally anything else.
Enter parklets, small urban interventions that take a boring old parking bay and turn it into a micro-oasis of seating, greenery, and - brace yourself - public space.
To the casual observer, these tiny pockets of reclaimed street space seem entirely inoffensive. Delightful, even. But to the more petrol-headed among us, they are nothing less than a direct assault on the British motorist. And as we all know, there is no greater crime in this country than suggesting that a car might not be the highest and best use of urban space.
Roads: Britain’s biggest private members’ club?
The outrage at parklets - and any other attempt to prioritise people over parking - stems from a deep and abiding belief that roads belong, first and foremost, to drivers.
This is not an accident. It was, in fact, foreseen by none other than Winston Churchill when he abolished road tax in 1937. He worried - correctly - that continuing to charge a specific tax for road use would lead drivers to believe they had bought exclusive rights to the streets. and so here we are, nearly a century later, still watching motorists insist that their car has a greater claim to a public road than, say, a parklet, a bike lane, or even - perish the thought - a pedestrian.
It’s all part of the UK's slightly uneasy relationship with public space. While cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Barcelona treat their streets as places to linger, Britain has gone the other way: Hostile architecture, pedestrian barriers, the disappearance of public loos, and a general sense that loitering in public is vaguely suspicious. After all, an Englishman’s house is his castle - so God forbid anyone gets too comfortable outside of it.
And yet, in spite of this, parklets persist.
The modern parklet movement began in 2005 when some San Francisco designers fed a parking meter, rolled out some turf, and installed a potted tree, as if to say, “look, a city street could be nice, actually.” Since then, parklets have spread worldwide, popping up in cities keen to reclaim space from cars and hand it back to people.
Here in the UK, they’ve been embraced by local councils and businesses looking to make streets more liveable. And some, like the pedal-powered parklet we built for the Royal Borough of Kingston, take things even further. Ours was designed to be towed into place using an electric cargo trike, then parked up to offer passersby a bench, free wifi, and even soothing birdsong played through a wooden bird box - because frankly, any attempt to drown out the sound of car engines in a British city is an act of public service.
Parlekts: A sign of streets to come?
Parklets might be small, but they symbolise a much bigger shift. Cities are starting to wake up to the idea that roads don’t have to be clogged with cars and that space can be used for something other than storing metal boxes. With pedestrianisation schemes, low-traffic neighbourhoods, and new cycling infrastructure, the battle over who gets to use the street is well and truly underway.
And yet, every time a single parking space is repurposed, a fresh wave of outrage erupts, as though a fundamental right has been trampled. what parklets really do is expose the absurdity of car dominance - if losing just one space is enough to send people into a tailspin, what does that say about how much of our cities we’ve already handed over to cars?
Perhaps reclaiming our streets is a question of presentation. Speaking at the launch of The Children’s Walking and Cycling Index report this month, Chris Boardman, who heads the government’s new cycling and walking body for England, Active Travel England, told MPs: “If we ask parents whether it’s OK to take parking from outside their house, a lot of time they will say no. But if we ask them. ‘Do you want your children to have transport independence, the freedom to stay at after school clubs?’ then they say yes.”
So next time you see a parklet - if it hasn’t yet been vandalised in the night - take a seat. Enjoy the extra space. Listen to the birdsong. And quietly contemplate just how much of our cities have been given over to parking, and whether that might not be just a little bit mad.
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