Pavement to Parks
Transforming Spaces for Cars into Places for People
Parks are essential building blocks for thriving places. American cities, which have historically given over prime land for automobile storage and transport, are rethinking the primacy of the car and are creating parks on land once dedicated to the automobile—including former parking lots and roadways, parking garages, and the spaces underneath highway overpasses. Pavement-to-parks conversions provide the opportunity to enhance community connection, promote environmental sustainability, and improve park access for communities that have lacked it.
This report presents stories from across the United States and the globe of cities and organizations that have worked to transform or enhance spaces formerly dedicated to cars into parks and open spaces that support recreation, community engagement, sustainability and resilience, and neighborhood connectivity and revitalization.
The profiled projects and programs were chosen for their excellence and to illustrate various types of transformations spanning a wide range of geographies, scales, and costs. These rebirth stories require the engagement of many parties, including public-sector leaders, community members, developers, urban designers and landscape architects, and philanthropic and nonprofit organizations. Done well, pavement-to-park transformations can yield powerful dividends for real estate and communities.
Look around. Could that pavement you see be a park instead? Download the report.
Report Summary: Parks are essential building blocks for thriving places. American cities, which have historically given over prime land for automobile storage and transport, are rethinking the primacy of the car and are creating parks on land once dedicated to the automobile—including former parking lots and roadways, parking garages, and the spaces underneath highway overpasses. Pavement-to-parks conversions provide the opportunity to enhance community connection, promote environmental sustainability, and improve park access for communities that have lacked it.
This report presents stories from across the United States and the globe of cities and organizations that have worked to transform or enhance spaces formerly dedicated to cars into parks and open spaces that support recreation, community engagement, sustainability and resilience, and neighborhood connectivity and revitalization.
The profiled projects and programs were chosen for their excellence and to illustrate various types of transformations spanning a wide range of geographies, scales, and costs. These rebirth stories require the engagement of many parties, including public-sector leaders, community members, developers, urban designers and landscape architects, and philanthropic and nonprofit organizations. Done well, pavement-to-park transformations can yield powerful dividends for real estate and communities.
Look around. Could that pavement you see be a park instead? Download the report.