How can parklets become socially embedded infrastructures by responding to the everyday life around them?
Major Research Project
MSc Urban Design and City Planning
The Bartlett School of Planning, UCL
Project Overview
Reclaiming the Kerbside explores how community parklets can become more socially embedded within everyday urban life.
The research examined parklets across Hackney through a borough-wide survey, detailed observation of three contrasting sites and interviews with residents and local authorities.
It found that parklets with similar physical forms could take on very different roles depending on their street context, patterns of everyday use and forms of care. These findings informed a Community Parklet Framework that supports communities from project initiation through design, making, stewardship and adaptation.
Research Question
How can community parklets be reconfigured as socially embedded infrastructures through a socio-temporal understanding of everyday urban life?
01
Parklets emerged as temporary experiments that reclaimed kerbside parking space for public use.
As cities formalised them through programmes, permits and design guidance, they became easier to implement more widely. At the same time, some of their participatory and experimental qualities became less prominent.
02
Contemporary parklet programmes often focus on physical provision, technical standards and implementation.
Residents may also be expected to navigate applications, funding and long-term maintenance.
This leaves less support for understanding how parklets become part of everyday life, how social relationships develop around them and how stewardship can be sustained over time.
03
The research examined parklets through the changing relationship between activity, place and time.
It considered their spatial context, everyday patterns of use and the relationships that sustain them over time.
This perspective provided a way to understand parklets as part of wider street life and as spaces that continue to develop after installation.
Rhythmanalysis informed the observational approach as a research strategy for examining changing patterns of everyday street life.
04
Hackney was selected because it was the first London borough to establish a formal community parklet programme and remains one of the longest-running examples.
Its resident-led model made visible the relationship between community initiative, formal permissions and long-term stewardship.
The research began with a survey of 16 parklets across Hackney, documenting their street context, physical characteristics and surrounding activities.
Three contrasting sites were selected for closer observation. Each was observed across four periods of the day to examine how movement, stopping, interaction and parklet use changed over time.
Interviews with residents and local authority officers added another perspective, focusing on how parklets were initiated, managed and sustained.
Borough-wide survey
A borough-wide survey documented 16 existing parklets and their surrounding street environments.
Each site was compared through its spatial context, physical characteristics and an initial socio-temporal reading. This wider survey provided the basis for selecting contrasting sites for detailed observation.
The full survey compared each parklet across spatial context, physical characteristics and preliminary socio-temporal conditions.
Table 5.1
Preliminary reading criteria
How movement and stopping unfolded around each parklet.
How many different activities and temporal patterns overlapped.
How open or enclosed each parklet was within its street setting.
Selecting Three Contrasting Sites
Observation Method
The three selected parklets were observed at four points across one weekday.
The observation followed changes in movement, activities, interactions and parklet use across the surrounding street environment. Rhythmanalysis informed this process as a research strategy, drawing attention to how activity, place and time changed in relation to one another.
Observation Material
The three parklets shared similar physical elements, yet each became part of everyday street life in a different way.
Their roles were shaped by the activities, movement patterns and social conditions around them.
Parklet 1
Commercial activity, pedestrian movement and bicycle hire created repeated moments of short stopping.
The parklet became a place for brief pauses within everyday journeys.
Parklet 4
Cycling, café activity and informal stopping took place across several street edges.
The parklet became one point within a wider network of places to pause and meet.
Parklet 5
The quieter residential street produced fewer direct occupations, yet the parklet remained part of local routines and neighbourhood awareness.
Its value could not be understood through occupation alone.
What the Observation Added
Similar physical interventions acquired different roles in different streets.
Their use depended on nearby activities, routes and places to stop.
Availability, visibility and occasional interaction could also contribute to everyday neighbourhood life.
Observation revealed how parklets became part of different street contexts, but it could not explain how they were initiated, cared for or sustained over time.
Semi-structured interviews with residents involved in community parklets and local authority officers explored the relationships, responsibilities and institutional conditions behind these spaces.
Theme 01
Community parklets often began with practical neighbourhood needs, such as somewhere to stop, more greenery or a shared place within the street.
Their social value developed gradually through repeated encounters. Residents described neighbours contributing plants, books, repairs and everyday care as the parklet became part of local life.
“Every day, children will come and see what’s new.”
Theme 02
Residents described formal applications, neighbourhood disagreement and the amount of personal effort required to start a parklet as major barriers.
Local authority officers also recognised these difficulties while managing legal responsibility, public safety, funding and procedural requirements.
The interviews revealed a gap between the support residents needed and the responsibilities institutions had to manage.
“An incredible amount of energy and positivity.”
Theme 03
Routine maintenance could be manageable, but wider stewardship involved planting, watering, repairing, fundraising, coordinating volunteers and sustaining local participation.
Several successful parklets depended on highly committed individuals. Shared responsibility and wider community ownership therefore became important conditions for long-term stewardship.
“A little bit of council ownership, a little bit of community ownership.”
Theme 04
Residents and local authority officers both described value in testing ideas before committing to permanent change.
Temporary interventions allowed people to experience proposals, respond to them and adapt them through use.
In some cases, a single parklet also became the starting point for planting, gardening and wider changes to the surrounding street.
“A right to experiment.”
What the Interviews Added
These findings shifted the project from asking how a parklet should be designed to considering what forms of support, participation and stewardship were needed throughout its life.
They became the basis for the Community Parklet Framework.
The spatial observations and interviews were synthesised into five requirements for supporting community parklets throughout their development and stewardship.
These requirements informed the structure of the Community Parklet Framework.
Framework Structure
The framework supports communities as they initiate projects, understand their streets, make decisions together and continue caring for the space after installation.
Initiate
From individual interest to collective action
The Starter Guide supports the early stages of a community parklet project. It helps residents introduce the idea, identify people connected to the street and begin conversations before formal design decisions are made.
It also helps a small organising group form and connects the project with the Community Parklet Hub for permissions and practical support.
Co-design
Reading the street before designing it
The Design Workbook helps participants develop a shared understanding of everyday street life before making spatial decisions.
Participants explore movement, activity, comfort, atmosphere and change over time through walking, watching, sitting, listening and discussion. Individual observations are brought together into a shared Street Profile that becomes the basis for imagining and designing the parklet.
Make
From shared priorities to adaptable spatial decisions
The Community Parklet Catalogue helps participants translate the shared priorities developed through the Design Workbook into physical space.
It provides a shared base system and adaptable spatial patterns instead of prescribing finished parklet designs. Participants can explore how different spatial arrangements, boundaries and elements respond to their street context and priorities.
The catalogue also encourages communities to work with materials they already have and to continue modifying the parklet as needs change.
Steward & Adapt
Supporting the parklet after installation
The Stewardship Guide supports communities as the parklet becomes part of everyday neighbourhood life.
It treats installation as the beginning of a longer process. The guide helps communities keep the space active, distribute everyday care, respond to changing needs and build connections with other parklet groups.
My Parklet complements face-to-face participation by providing a shared space for coordinating care, recording issues, organising activities and connecting with the Community Parklet Hub.
Supporting the Process
The Community Parklet Hub was proposed as an intermediary between residents and local authorities.
It provides coordination, permission support and practical help throughout the project, while the My Parklet platform supports communication and long-term stewardship.
The framework was tested through three hypothetical scenarios based on the contrasting street conditions identified during fieldwork.
Each scenario shows how the same framework could lead to a different spatial response when applied to a different everyday context.
Scenario 1
A shared space for brief encounters, exchange and everyday participation.
Scenario 2
A shared growing space connected to existing patterns of stopping and neighbourhood activity.
Scenario 3
A place for everyday play, care and informal neighbourhood interaction.
A community parklet can become a starting point for wider change.
As participation grows, activities, relationships and small spatial interventions can extend into the surrounding street and neighbourhood.
Case 01
Exchange activities can become part of everyday street life and create more opportunities to pause and meet.
Over time, seating, planting and temporary street elements can extend these activities into the surrounding area.
Case 02
Collective growing can extend from the parklet into nearby green space and develop into a shared neighbourhood garden.
The parklet can remain a hub for gathering while connecting to a wider landscape of shared care.
Case 03
Play and neighbourhood activity can extend from the parklet into the surrounding street.
Temporary play elements, planting and other street changes can support its gradual development as a more people-centred neighbourhood space.
Project Reflections
Their social value develops through continued participation, use and care. As residents remain involved in shaping and stewarding the space, the parklet can become embedded within everyday neighbourhood life.
Everyday patterns of activity and change over time can become a shared basis for spatial decisions. Observing and discussing these patterns allows different local experiences to inform how a place is designed.
Community involvement can extend from project initiation and collective design into making, stewardship and adaptation. This gives residents an ongoing role in shaping shared urban space as needs change.
Community parklets reallocate street space for shared use while giving residents an ongoing role in its care. With sustained organisational support, small interventions can become shared neighbourhood resources and possible starting points for wider change.
