It's time to make up a bunch of awards and hand them out to the good, the bad and the ugly in the Hub real estate universe. Yep, it's time for the Second Annual Curbed Boston Awards!
Parklet! It's not a new word and it's not specific to the Hub (there's an example above from San Francisco), but it had its moment in the area in 2012. Especially back in June, when the Menino administration announced it would go forward with several parklets in the spring of 2013.
The patio-like little parks will be carved out of one to three existing parking spaces in the South End as well as probably in Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Allston and Chinatown, too. The city will pay for the first parklets, estimated to cost $12,000 each, and then ask nearby businesses to pitch in.
That's not all! Pointless streets citywide (think traffic triangles everyone ignores anyway, gravely cuts, etc.) are to be filled in with something called "pocket parks." Like parklets, pocket parks will have chairs and tables and people sipping caffeinated beverages from long paper cups. Been to New York and seen the tables and chairs and tourists in Times Square? That.
In Cambridge, moreover, parklets are very much already a reality—at least they were temporarily. In late September, the city and its partners converted 18 parking spaces into parklets for International PARK(ing) Day (get it?).
For exemplifying the Hub's conscious pivot to public-transit/pedestrian/bike-friendly development and daily living, and for simply describing the concept its meant to define in two syllables, "parklet" wins the 2012 Curbed Boston Award for Real Estate Word of the Year.
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