Dickinson Square in November as construction began. Photo courtesy of Plan Philly.

Construction for Dickinson Square has begun! With hulking, dying sycamore trees and buildings, pathways, and other infrastructure last renovated in the ’70s, Dickinson Square was due for a remake. The Friends of Dickinson Square received a service grant from the Collaborative in 2007 to envision the sustainable redesign of this popular Pennsport park.

Since then, Phase 1 of the park’s improvements have been funded by the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation and placed into the able hands of LRSLA Studio.  Ashley Hahn of Plan Philly’s Eyes on the Street shares her walk-through of the just-begun renovation project as the construction fence rose and the diseased old trees fell.

Many thanks to the hard-working volunteers who had a hand (sometimes containing splinters) in designing and building the Collaborative’s Pallet Park for Park(ing) Day. Jordan Barr, Alex Cutrona, Erin Fox, Erin Keith, Rachel Lijana, and Charlie Oropallo took the project from an interesting idea to reality. . . with help from Revolution Recovery, McNaughton’s Gardens, and Urban Jungle.

Urban Jungle, a garden center on East Passyunk Avenue that specializes in vertical gardening, took on the team’s challenge to create a vertical garden from pallets. They attached landscaping fabric to the back and edges of each pallet, filled the gaps between slats with potting soil and plants, and slowly tilted the pallets from horizontal to vertical over a period of several weeks to let the roots take… adding one brick a day in the shop. The result: ruggedly handsome, roadside vertical gardens. If you try this at home, Urban Jungle’s Chris Klotz advises, grasses work best.

Along with promoting an ethos of repurposing urban scrap, the volunteer team was attentive to what happened to their installation the day after Park(ing) Day. Revolution Recovery recycled a stack that was displayed in their “raw state” on park(ing) Day. The furniture found a enthusiastic permanent home with the Village of Arts & Humanities.

The Collaborative’s Pallet Park was one of over thirty parks created for Park(ing) Day. See some other Philly Park(ing) Day parks!

The number of parks in Philly will jump on Park(ing) Day when parks will pop up throughout the city. On Friday, September 16, Philadelphia will once again be part of this multi-city adventure in re-imagining the metered parking space as 170 square feet of public space. If you’re not creating one, you can have an adventure anyway—get a map of the parks, pay them and their friendly creators a visit, then stop by the Collaborative at 5 PM for the Park(ing) Day party! RSVP

The Community Design Collaborative gathered three Park(ing) Day participants—the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, SMP Architects, and the Collaborative itself—for a preview of their parks. Here’s what they’ve got in the works:

Pallet Park
12^th and Arch at the Reading Terminal Market
For the Collaborative’s entry, Erin Keith, Erin Fox, Jordan Barr, Rachel Lijana, Alexander Cutrona, and Charles Oropallo are turning pallets into modular seating and tables… for the crowd that comes to the Reading Terminal for morning coffee and lunch. The pallets will be raw, but sanded, and reconfigured throughout the day as outdoor diners and sitters ebb and flow. The Collaborative Park(day) team hopes to get people thinking about urban scrap and its possibilities. “We want to inspire people to find things to reuse in their neighborhoods,” says Erin Keith.

Giant Suggestion Box
15^th and Arch
The Planning Commission will hang a screen of Park(ing) Day postcards around its space. The black, white, and green postcards will form super graphics… maybe a car, an arrow, or the word “park”. Stop by and fill out a postcard to answer a provocative question and over the course of the day they’ll swap out their super graphics with your words, pictures, and ideas. They’ll also provide you with a stamp to mail a postcard out!

Grounds for a Park
16^th and Walnut
“What’s the precursor for a park? Ground!” says SMP Architects’ Scott Ritchie. Based on Walter DeMario’s Earth-Filled Room, the team will fill their parking space with coffee grounds collected from the ubiquitous coffee shops in Center City. They’ll be giving these nutrient rich coffee grounds away all day to feed your plants or compost heap. The goal of this Park(ing) Day team is to end the day with an empty space, “It would be great if the installation got rid of itself.”

Check out the funny take on Mt. Tabor Cyber Village Senior Housing via a Philebrity reader’s cameraphone and footage of Greenfield Elementary School, co-star of the Philadelphia Water Department’s new video Green City Clean Waters.

Al Spivey, Jr. and WNCA volunteer and park advocate Craig Ablin, flanked by some of Wisshickon Neighbors Park's oldest and youngest fans.

It’s been said that it takes a village to raise a child. In Wissahickon’s case, it takes a neighborhood to raise a park.

Over the past six months, a team of Collaborative volunteers worked with the Wissahickon Neighbors Civic Association on a master plan to revitalize Wissahickon Neighbors Park. Now, the Collaborative’s early design assistance has become a catalyst for a big boost in funding for park improvements.  During this weekend’s Love Your Park Day, park advocates learned that the park will receive $200,000 in city funding.

Wissahickon Neighbors Park was already earmarked for $30,000 in City capital funds when Craig Ablin, leader of  a WNCA committee to improve the park, shared the Collaborative’s plans and renderings with Councilman Curtis Jones.  WNCA’s compelling vision– and visuals– convinced Jones to make the case for more funding.  Read Full Story

Thanks to everyone who helped out and stopped by our  “sustainable backyard” on PARK(ing) Day.  We had a great time talking with curious people, meeting PARK(ing) Day participants and fans, looking up at the clouds from the hammock, hanging out laundry, and taking our lunch break in this improvised plant-filled backyard in front of the Center for Architecture on 1218 Arch Street.

The Collaborative’s  Park(ing)Day  installation used repurposed materials (salvaged wood, Interface carpet samples,  and used  construction buckets) along with native plants, a hammock and a clothesline and sparked discussions about how to make the most of  an urban open space.  We also gave away recycling containers to Philly residents and a handed out flyers with strategies and resources for promoting sustainability in your own backyard.

A special thanks goes to volunteers Karena Thurston and Nissa Grant, who worked with Emily Stromberg to plan and design the project.  Karena also helped assemble the yard and loaned us over twenty plants from her own backyard for the day. Read Full Story

On September 17th, the Urban Sustainability Forum will turn its focus to issues of vacant land in Philadelphia.  The forum, entitled No Vacancy: Re-imagining Vacant Land in Philadelphia, will look at vacant land as an environmental and economic issue and explore ways to rejuvenate abandoned spaces.  Panelists will address potential reuses for empty space, tensions between temporary and permanent use, and best practices.

Beth Miller, the Collaborative’s executive director, will be moderating a panel of experts  that includes Terry Gillen, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority and Dan Kildee, Treasurer of Genesee County, Michigan. Kildee was instrumental in creating the Genesee County Land Bank in Flint, Michigan, which has encouraged the reuse of abandoned properties and played an important role in the revitalization of the city.

Mark your calendars for September 17 at 6 p.m. at the Academy of Natural Sciences, 19^th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway.