Rhodeside & Harwell, Inc., landscape architects and planners, along with lighting designers from Pixelumen Lab transformed a typical city parking space on historic King Street in Alexandria, Va., into a sculpted park animated by video and interactive lighting on PARK(ing) Day, Sept. 19. The firm invited passers-by to partake of the grassy slope. At dusk, the shade canopy became a screen for a light show projection.

PARK(ing) Day is international, as attested to by this comfy installation
in Dublin, Ireland.

The third Friday in September is "International PARK(ing) Day," an annual day event in which landscape architects and other design-minded people transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks.

PARK(ing) Day began in 2005 with Rebar, a San Francisco-based art and design studio. The idea behind it is to get people to rethink the way streets are used and promotes ideas for use of urban spaces.

PARK(ing) Day keeps growing. Rebar reports that in 2011, the last time it gathered participation numbers, there were 975 park installations in more than 160 cities on six continents.

In recent years, PARK(ing) Day has inspired city governments to create permits to extend the public realm into parking lanes. In San Francisco, the Pavement to Parks "Parklet" program allows businesses, community groups and individuals to seek permits to transform metered parking spaces into small "parklets" that are open to the public. In New York City the "pop up café" program offers similar permitting for cafés wishing to offer sidewalk service.

"What has been really gratifying is that PARK(ing) Day, which began as a guerilla art project, has been adopted by cities and integrated into their official planning strategies," said Rebar principal Blaine Merker. "A relatively modest art intervention has changed the way cities conceive, organize and use public space," he added.