Yesterday, UC Davis students reclaimed parking spaces for human use along E Street, between First and Third Street. The spots were occupied from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The event, PARK(ing) Day, was held with approval from the Davis Police Department. Organizers from the landscape architecture program said the purpose of the event was to emphasize the need for more people-space in the urban environment. Eighteen projects from the upper-division studio class Social Factors in Landscape Architecture were on display in downtown.
Those from the UC Davis Arboretum donated plants to the students. The projects featured reusable products such as used boxes, newspapers, bottles, old bike wheels and other items.
Tara Hanlon, a program representative for the landscape architecture program, said the event normally happens worldwide in mid-September, but this is before the school year begins for the quarter system.
“This is our first time doing PARK(ing) Day in Davis,” Hanlon said. “There’s always been interest in getting landscape architecture programs involved in this event.”
Senior landscape architecture major Weijing Marx constructed a web of yarn connected together by poles, with newspaper hearts hung up to them. She also hung letters that said “one heart, one whole.”
“I put different colored poles and let people choose where they wanted to place the hearts,” Marx said. “It’s interesting to see where they want to put them. It represents the differences among us; how we all dress differently, look differently, but the ‘one heart, one whole’ sign shows how we’re all connected.”
Kathleen O’Leary, a senior landscape architecture student, said she created a croquet set-up, with benches, because she wanted people to have a place to sit and something to do.
“We got to choose what part of the street we put on project on,” O’Leary said. “I included a lot of fake lawn because the owner’s of Pinkadot [the store which her project was in front of] complained about the lack of greenery on E Street.”
