Joni Mitchell was right when she wrote the lyrics for “Big Yellow Taxi”
“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot”
Now it seems that depave.org is working to reverse the trend.
Depave was created to inspire and promote the removal of unnecessary concrete and asphalt from urban areas. Depave is a project of City Repair, a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon. Their vision is simple: “Livable cities where people and wildlife coexist and thrive amidst clean air, clean water, and an abundance of plants, trees, and vegetation.”
The Fargo Gardens project will transform a 3000 square foot asphalt parking lot in North Portland into a community greenspace with vegetables, fruit trees, native plants, and sitting areas. Removal of the parking lot will reduce pollution, and provide land for bird and butterfly habitat, gardens, native vegetation and beauty in an urban neighborhood. The completed site will be used to educate the public about pavement removal and storm water drainage management.
Nearly 150 volunteers showed up for the depaving. The majority of the volunteers were also attendees at the eighth annual Towards Carfree Cities conference. This is the first year that the conference was held in the United States. The asphalt and gravel underneath were loaded into containers and hauled away for recycling. Nothing was wasted.
Ms Angela Goldsmith, of Goldsmith Properties, was originally planning to put a tri-plex in the same parking lot. When approached by depave.org to turn the spot into a green space, she felt that the idea was a “no-brainer”. The garden will be open to the public during the day, and rented out for private events at night to help generate income to cover operating costs, Goldsmith said.
Check out the video of the project from StreetFilms.
Resources:
- depave.org
- JoniMitchell.com: Big Yellow Taxi
- StreetFilms
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Welcome to Verda Vivo. My name is Daryl Warner Laux.
I have a huge doubt : where all these cars will park ? I mean, there are still a lot of cars around… and they need to park.
Sure, it is a great project for the future where there will be more buses, trains and bikes and less cars… but right now ?
Anyway, that’s a great initiative.
Oh, meanwhile, in France, the car makers are happy to sell an important amount of small cars thanks to a bonus granted by the government.
More and more people are replacing their old cars by new efficient ones. If you are interested to learn out more on this phenomenon, I’ll write something about it.
I think in this particular case, there was sufficient parking in the area as well as a lot of foot traffic.
If parking is limited and there is adequate public transportation, I wonder if folks would start making different choices about whether to use a car, carpool or use another means of transportation. Combine that with the higher price of gas and folks just might change their behavior! ~ Daryl
I think they already are changing their consumption habits and patterns…
Finally, soaring oil prices are hurting right now, but they might just save us from ourselves.