Parking Lot Picnic

You’ll find that good cities are sprinkled with little parks great for soaking in the sun, meeting people, reading a book, and… picnicking! However, the development trends of the past century have covered the land with vast swaths of pavement. Pavement that caters well to the automobile, and not much else.

Here, in a typical North American parking lot, a small group of picnickers try to enjoy their midday repast on a sliver of green amidst a sea of barren grey. Is this a desperate attempt to revive a quaint tradition or a bold protest against the rampant takeover of impermeable surfaces? Either way, it is clear that there is an increasing lack of public spaces for social activities such as picnics in our built environment. So much so that it has prompted temporary interventions like Picnurbia, which we wrote about a few months ago. Perhaps urban hacktivist, Florian Rivière, can design a guerrilla picnic, replete with artificial turf, to be rolled out on a ubiquitous piece of pavement for the enjoyment of an impromptu picnic.