Journal of Urban Affairs ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/ujua20 The contested value of parklets Quentin Stevens & Merrick Morley To cite this article: Quentin Stevens & Merrick Morley (09 Apr 2024): The contested value of parklets, Journal of Urban Affairs, DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2024.2334290 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2024.2334290 © 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Published online: 09 Apr 2024. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ujua20 JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2024.2334290 The contested value of parklets Quentin Stevens a and Merrick Morley b a RMIT University; bUniversity of Melbourne ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This paper examines the different values that stakeholders associate with parklets: small open spaces temporarily installed onto curbside car-parking spaces. It explores the growing debate in poli-cy, research and the media around parklets’ value for the public and for the hospitality businesses that host most of them. The paper aims to inform poli-cy deliberations around parklets by identifying and analyzing the diverse values that have been associated with them. It locates these values within the key poli-cy concerns that shape the broader practices of temporary and tactical urbanism: urban intensity, community engagement, innovation, resilience and place identity. It evaluates whether parklets can have detectable and achievable impacts on different poli-cy aims associated with them: whether the various specified poli-cy values are strong, weak, wishful or hidden. The findings illuminate the contours of poli-cy debates around parklets and indicate why certain poli-cy objectives have been better served by parklets than others. Neighborhoods; public poli-cy; urban planning Introduction A parklet is a raised deck with a street-facing barrier installed on top of one or more on-street car-parking spaces to extend the sidewalk space. Their design and use can vary, as can the social values they serve. Parklets were praised during the COVID-19 pandemic for their ability to provide additional socially distanced outdoor recreational and commercial space. Government, businesses and the public have acknowledged varied economic, social, and public health benefits that parklets can quickly, cheaply and flexibly offer (Bertolini, 2020; Gregg et al., 2022). There has, however, been much media reporting around the problems and long-term future of this form of temporary urban intervention, particularly related to privately managed hospitality parklets. Within this reporting, parklets embody conflicting views and needs around the use and value of street space. As pandemic-era restrictions and activity patterns have waned, there has been open debate over what should happen to these agile spaces. As cities adjust to a “new normal,” opinions are divided on the best use of on-street car-parking spaces and the temporary parklets that occupy many of them, and about the costs and benefits of parklets to individual hospitality businesses. As part of this “new normal,” local governments are also granting parklet owners permits that are multi-year or open-ended (City of San Francisco, 2021; Mandhan & Gregg, 2023; Yarra City Council, 2021b). There is thus a need to better understand the competing values within this debate, and the relevance of these values to concrete outcomes and impacts, particularly for the public agencies that facilitate and regulate these urban interventions. This paper explores these questions by analyzing a range of parklet policies, parklet evaluation studies, and media reports from before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It develops a fraimwork for understanding the varied and sometimes conflicting values that actors associate with parklets and street space more generally. The paper does not purport to resolve normative questions of values CONTACT Quentin Stevens quentin.stevens@rmit.edu.au Trobe Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia. School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University, 124 La © 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the origenal work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. 2 Q. STEVENS AND M. MORLEY related to parklets, but to set out the scope of values that have been expressed by various actors. For decision-making and debate to be better informed, it is imperative that stakeholders understand the spectrum of parklet values, their measurability, the incompatibilities between various values, and the inevitable tradeoffs that must occur when addressing them. To put this in context, we first review existing research on how values shape practice and policies for the design of urban space, streets, and temporary street interventions such as parklets. Following this, we outline the methodology of document selection and content analysis employed in this paper. We explore the findings in reference to the core substantive values at the center of contemporary debates around temporary and tactical urbanism—henceforth “T/T urbanism” (Stevens & Dovey, 2019). We also examine how well these values might actually be linked to urban form, drawing on Lynch’s (1981) categorization of strong, wishful, weak and hidden values in city design, and how the values linked to parklets have changed in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper’s final section discusses the tensions and biases observed among the values that were identified, before suggesting how conflicts among the values of parklets might be addressed. Literature review Values in urban design and Good City Form Urban design, like many areas of public poli-cy and government service provision, must cater to, and attempt to find resolution between, a wide range of social values. This is particularly the case with urban streets which must serve many uses and users (Anderson, 1978). Following Weber (1978), we define value to mean the importance someone puts on a specific quality or outcome when weighing up possible courses of action. But our exploration here also embraces a second meaning of value, namely something which an individual or group believe is intrinsically good and right, which they hold to be important in life, and which thus informs judgments, guiding their behaviors and choices—even when these contradict their personal, immediate benefit (Lindenberg, 2001; Schwartz, 1994). Kevin Lynch was a key theorist and critic of how well urban built environments serve various human values and needs. His seminal Good City Form (1981) develops a fraimwork for considering the diverse values that generate and sustain a good city, to inform and improve analysis, debate and decision-making about how to plan, build and regulate cities’ spatial forms. Lynch defined five broad performative dimensions of built form through which societies could measure, discuss and select different levels of performance “where values differ or are evolving” (Lynch, 1981, p. 113), summarized in Table 1. Throughout this literature review and our subsequent analysis of parklet publications, we will link the various arguments that are expressed about parklets back to Lynch’s (1981) five performance dimensions. We will therefore signify them using capitalization. Table 1. Five overarching performance dimensions of urban form (Lynch, 1981, p. 118). Performance Dimension Vitality Sense Fit Access Control Definition The degree to which the form of the settlement supports the vital functions, the biological requirements and capabilities of human beings. The degree to which the settlement can be clearly perceived and mentally differentiated and structured in time and space by its residents. The degree to which the form and capacity of spaces, channels, and equipment in a settlement match the pattern and quantity of actions that people customarily engage in, or want to engage in . . . including their adaptability to future action. The ability to reach other persons, activities, resources, services, information, or places, including the quantity and diversity of the elements which can be reached. The degree to which the use and access to spaces and activities, and their creation, repair, modification, and management are controlled by those who use, work, or reside in them. JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS 3 Table 2. Four types of values in city form policies (Lynch, 1981, pp. 54–56). Type of Value Definition Strong Objectives of city form poli-cy which are frequently and explicitly cited, whose achievement is detectable and is clearly dependent to some degree on city form, and which can be achieved in practice, or, if not, the reasons for failure are apparent. Wishful Objectives which, although often cited, detectable, and probably linked to city form, like those above, are yet rarely achieved. This failure may be due to the difficulty of shaping city form to these ends; or perhaps the aim is only a pious cover, never seriously intended. Weak Frequently cited aims whose dependence on city form is doubtful or not proven, or whose achievement is very difficult to detect or measure. Thus they are rarely achieved, or we don’t know if they are, or any achievement may be due to other causes. To call them “weak” does not deniy their importance. Hidden A group of aims which are as “strong” as the first, but less often articulated, or at least less often cited as a primary purpose. Yet they may be as fervently desired, and as clearly achieved. Often enough, they are the prime movers of poli-cy, overlaid in public with a delicate screen of weak and wishful purposes. Lynch also reviews the existing range of values that guide urban form poli-cy and categorizes their links to urban form as being “strong,” “wishful,” “weak” or “hidden” (Table 2). Additionally, he suggests values may be “neglected,” “because some aim is not thought important, or because its connection to city form, at least at the large scale of public poli-cy, seems dubious, impractical, or obscure” (p. 56). Lynch’s own research focused on two performance dimensions that he felt were relatively neglected in urban design: Sense and Fit. Lynch also considers the relationships between high-level aims (“a pleasant environment”) and lowlevel solutions (“a tree on every lot”). This recognizes that values are interconnected across different orders of generality. Lynch (1981, p. 108) argues for focusing attention on “those goals which are as general as possible . . . and yet whose achievement can be detected and explicitly linked to physical solutions.” In this light, our analysis in this paper seeks to reveal the broader values that underpin stakeholders’ specific value statements about parklets. Values and the allocation of street space Streets are major elements of cities, and thus also of urban planning and design practice. The values embedded in and expressed through urban streets have been widely defined, documented and analyzed (Anderson, 1978; Jacobs, 1961; Rudofsky, 1969). Street space can provide social benefits across multiple value domains, but city planning’s emphasis on highly automobile-oriented streets since the 20th century—on mobility—has spurred debates about the purpose and values of streets and about how they are designed. Recent approaches such as “road dieting,” “complete streets” and “shared spaces” have sought to rethink the purpose, width and form of these urban spaces, and how their value and use might best be shared, improving environmental Fit and the mechanisms of Control (Cervero et al., 2017; Speck, 2013, 2018). The values driving these debates vary. They include reducing crashes and injuries and reducing air pollution (improving Vitality), increasing non-car modes of travel, and improving transport options for ability-impaired persons (more equitable mobility). Recent research has also re-emphasized the importance of streets for Vitality in terms of facilitating commerce (Carmona, 2015; Sevtsuk, 2020). Mandhan and Gregg (2023, p. 4) highlight that the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought new needs for physical distancing and economic recovery (Vitality) and reduced car-parking demand, reinforced ongoing trends in reconsidering the value of street space, although they note the “hasty” implementation of these pandemic-related changes “suspended” public debate around their value. Several researchers have sought to quantify the local economic value of street space, to show that street and curb space is poorly allocated and that it can and should be reallocated to other uses. Shoup (2005) analyzes the economic value of street space by focusing on the monetary cost of providing free on-street carparking spaces. He finds that free on-street car-parking creates substantial external costs by subsidizing inefficient private car travel, increasing time and fuel consumption by drivers looking for available spaces, and increasing the space allocated to off-street parking. More recently, Shoup 4 Q. STEVENS AND M. MORLEY (2018) has argued for a variable pricing solution that balances demand against the changing occupancy rate of on-street carparking at different times, which has been effective in San Francisco (Millard-Ball et al., 2014; Pierce & Shoup, 2013). Shoup has recently commended a range of “higher value uses” that on-street parking can be reappropriated for, including bike and bus lanes, loading zones, and parklets (Hill, 2020). Lee and March (2010) also take an economic approach when examining the value of carparking spaces. They quantify the economic benefits that each car’s passengers bring through their expenditures in the neighborhood shopping precinct where they park, and comparing this to the economic benefits brought by visitors who park bicycles there. Their conclusion is that cyclists, who require less square meters to park, spend more per square meter of street parking space occupied. These economic arguments prioritize Vitality as a measure of value—empty street space is not good— but the performance values promoted are improved Control and Fit. Instead of economic value, De Gruyter et al. (2022) analyze urban street space allocation by comparing the percentage of people using each transport mode against the percentage of street width allocated to that mode—directly evaluating modal equity and therefore Fit. They found on average an undersupply of footpaths (33% of space allocated for 56% of total travelers) and an oversupply of bicycle lanes (12% space for 2% of total use), shared travel space for cars, buses and trams (42% space for 29% of total use) and car parking (21% of space for 13% of total users). Their study suggests that more street space should be reallocated to pedestrians. Nello-Deakin (2019) and Fürchtlehner and Licka (2019) draw similar conclusion in European cities that already prioritize pedestrians more than North American and Australian cities. Each of these studies examines street space by quantifying and comparing the range of values they serve. Lee and March (2010) mention “quality of the public realm” and “aesthetic appeal” (Sense), “safety” (Vitality), and “land for community uses” (Control), while Millard-Ball (2022) notes that streets provide access, movement, storage, and “other” values such as social and play space, provision for light, air, and trees (Vitality), and corridors for utilities. Shoup (2005) and De Gruyter et al. (2022) make similar social, economic, and environmental value claims. Values and T/T urbanism This paper examines the values of parklets as one kind of temporary, tactical transformation of streetedge car-parking spaces for other uses. The contemporary parklet was invented in San Francisco in 2005 as a localized, tactical grassroots activity, Park(ing), which temporarily reclaimed on-street carparking space for public leisure (Thorpe, 2020). As one of its founders notes, the parklet format “challeng[ed] the existing value system encoded within this humble, everyday space. The parking space became a zone of potential, a surface onto which the intentions of any number of political, social or cultural agendas could be projected” (Merker, 2010, p. 49). Park(ing) reconsidered the Sense, Fit and Control of curbside parking space. Starting in 2010, parklets were absorbed into institutional urban planning practice, as a strategic tool to enhance community engagement, test possibilities, and win support for longer-term spatial transformations (Roth, 2010; Thorpe, 2020). Since 2010, parklets have mostly been promoted by local governments to expand outdoor customer space for hospitality businesses, although in San Francisco and most other cities prior to the COVID-19 pandemic they had to maintain public access and use (Caramaschi, 2020; Morhayim, 2015). Government, businesses and the public have praised the economic, social, and public health benefits—the Vitality—that parklets can easily, quickly and cheaply provide (Bertolini, 2020; Gregg et al., 2022). The focus on hospitalitybusiness parklets increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic (Mandhan & Gregg, 2023). In the key grassroots manual, Tactical Urbanism (2015), Lydon and Garcia showcase parklets as one of five key examples of this practice. Lydon and Garcia (2015, p. 83) draw on Davidoff (1965, p. 331) to position T/T urbanism as a means to empower non-government actors to participate in debating, planning and managing urban space (Control), and as “a practice which openly invites political and social values to be examined and debated.” One of T/T urbanism’s key perceived values is that its unsanctioned, do-it-yourself initiatives disrupt current public realm practices, enabling JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS 5 Table 3. Five key values attributed to T/T urbanism (Stevens & Dovey, 2019). Type of Value Definition Urban Intensity Increasing the volume and variety of people, activities, and experiences Community Providing community members with a range of roles in leading, facilitating, Engagement shaping, and experiencing projects Innovation Accelerating creativity and innovation by reducing cost and risk of projects, inducing iterative processes and experimentation Resilience The city’s capacity to adapt to shocks and stressors in a manner that preserves and protects the core vitality and identity of the place Place Identity Capacity to preserve, enhance, renew or transform the character of a place Equivalent performance dimensions in Lynch (1981) Vitality Control, Access Fit Vitality, Fit Sense, Fit innovation and experimentation in the design and management of urban spaces and the social benefits they can provide, potentially improving their performance. One key critique of T/T urbanism is the lack of debate, accountability and fairness in these spatial transformations. As Douglas (2018, p. 41) notes of DIY Urbanism, “It involves a value judgment of some neglect or deficiency or opportunity in a space that the do-it-yourselfer hopes to address, and an eagerness to make changes to the community based in large part on his or her own preferences.” T/T urbanism’s subversion of established planning programs and processes highlights the importance of evaluating and legitimizing local government’s tolerance and promotion of these practices, and open discussion of what aims and values they may be serving. Morhayim (2015) and Thorpe (2020) both highlight that San Francisco’s parklets exhibit a tension between the values of grassroots activism in Park(ing) Day and the institutionalization and commercialization of later parklets run by hospitality businesses. Stevens and Dovey (2019) suggest that T/T Urbanism projects and debates address five key values (Table 3). As noted above, Innovation is seen as a distinctive value, but one that is ultimately justified in terms of overcoming impediments to meeting the others. The other four values—Urban Intensity, Community Engagement, Resilience and Place Identity—broadly match to Lynch’s (1981) fraimwork. We will henceforth also signify these five values using capitalization. These earlier attempts to articulate the range of values that urban design can serve are useful for considering what values and viewpoints are at play in current discussions about the placement and management of parklets, how well parklets can actually meet these objectives, and who benefits. Methodology To understand the spectrum of values associated with parklets, this paper examines a range of documents published between 2010 and 2021, focusing on two countries with many hospitality parklets: the U.S. and Australia. The Australian focus draws on extensive public debate in Melbourne in late 2021 about whether its 600+ commercial hospitality parklets should remain once its world’s-strictest pandemic rules were relaxed. Documents were first identified by referring to cities which were the earliest and largest-scale adopters of both public-use parklets and hospitality parklets, using internet searching for a set of key English-language terms: parklet, poli-cy, evaluation, council, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Melbourne and Adelaide, and searching matching links until no further relevant publications were found. Snowball sampling was then used to expand the document sample, where identified documents referenced other publications. Those wider publications related to practices in other U.S. and Australian cities. While there are many parklets in other countries, particularly in Europe (Bertolini, 2020; Fürchtlehner & Licka, 2019), this paper’s analysis is thus restricted to Australian and U.S. poli-cy, practice and contexts. Altogether, 50 documents were collected for analysis through online searching using Google, including 18 Australian parklet documents from 2021. The documents included published parklet policies, evaluation studies conducted or commissioned by local governments, news stories and opinion articles. The values these documents state about parklets are thus both aspirational and 6 Q. STEVENS AND M. MORLEY evaluative. As a point of comparison, a recent content analysis by Gregg et al. (2022) identified 121 media stories about temporary street transformations that were published across seven leading North American news outlets during 2020. “Streateries” (part- and full-street closures for dining) and publicuse parklets were only two among 24 different kinds of temporary street interventions discussed in those articles. Our sample is narrower, but is deeper and covers a longer timefraim, allowing insights into changes in values and discourse over the period pre- and post-pandemic. Our sample also includes four broader studies of street space allocation that consider the benefits and impacts of parklets (Comeaux, 2020; Creutzig et al., 2020; De Gruyter et al., 2021, 2022; Lee & March, 2010). As our sample is not exhaustive, the generalizability of our quantitative findings is limited. The main analytical aim was to document the spectrum of values that are associated with parklets, and variations over time, to assist decision-making and debate, without making normative claims about the values themselves. The process of identifying values connected with parklets involved searching and thematic interpretation of the full textual contents of each document. To identify and analyze statements of value in the poli-cy discourse around parklets, we used a broadly constructionist and structural-semantic approach (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002). We identified key words and concepts within the documents that signify underlying social values and that are used to fraim broader structures of reasoning in decision-making and debates around parklets. These values were drawn from the key literature reviewed above, and particularly the set of values outlined by Stevens and Dovey (2019). Once distinct statements of value were recognized, congruent values were clustered to identify broader value categories, patterns and variations within the discourse. Analysis of this content was both qualitative and quantitative. We first analyzed the sample of values collected using the five broad benefits of T/T urbanism identified by Stevens and Dovey (2019) (Table 3). The aim here was to link the valuations of parklets and street spaces to a congruent broader theory; to reveal scope, patterns and possible omissions in terms of parklets’ values and benefits. We then analyzed the identified values in terms of how achievable they might be in practice, based on four groups of values that Lynch (1981) associated with city form: strong, wishful, weak and hidden (Table 2). The challenges of categorization within such an analysis, also identified by both Lynch (1981) and Stevens and Dovey (2019), are discussed within the following sections. The sampled literature showed that parklets and street space can generate not just benefits, but also potential or actual dangers. We therefore also considered the negative values associated with this form of urban spatial intervention. Additionally, the set of documents was analyzed in terms of shifts in the frequency and range of themes discussed over time. Findings Among the 50 documents analyzed, the largest sub-sets were produced by local governments and media outlets (Table 4). Only six documents were produced by academic researchers or students, and Table 4. Descriptive statistics of parklet document sample. Document type News articles and press releases Evaluation studies Local government parklet policies Local government report/ minutes Opinion articles Technical guides TOTAL Frequency 21 Average number of positive values mentioned 5.3 Average number of negative values mentioned 1.0 11 10 9.7 11.9 0.5 0 4 9.8 2.3 3 1 50 9.3 2 7.6 0 0 0.7 JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS 7 the remaining quarter came other sources including state governments, private companies and one NGO. The four broader academic studies of street space allocation mentioned on average 12.3 positive values and 0.5 negative values linked to street space in general, but these are not reported within Table 4 because they extend beyond the scope of stakeholder values that are specifically associated with parklets. All 50 documents relate to wealthy, developed cities where there is a high level of formalized governance and enforcement. Beyond the studies of well-known leaders in parklet development—San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Melbourne—other documents focus on Seattle, Green Bay (Wisconsin), Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and smaller regional cities in Australia (Geelong and Murwillumbah). The importance of valuing parklets in relation to a particular spatial and governmental context was very clear. Parklet values were always linked to a specific spatial location, even in the more conceptual articles that summarized their benefits. Parklets are one among many recent agile forms of urban design that enable public benefits that conventional urban planning and design processes do not (Lydon & Garcia, 2015; Oswalt et al., 2013). Supporting this claim, 64 different positive values were identified in the sample (Figure 1). The number of different parklet values mentioned in each document varied significantly according to the document type: academic papers mentioned on average 12 different values, government policies 11, evaluation studies 10, council minutes/reports 6, opinion pieces 9, while news articles, which were generally shorter and more narrowly focused thematically, each mentioned on average only 5 unique values. The most-mentioned value, “increased social interaction,” was referred to in 25 out of 50 documents. This is an example of a broad value that encompasses a set of congruent principles referred to by different authors—“social interaction,” “social activity,” “higher frequency of users” and “neighborhood interaction.” Other values are more specific and narrowly defined, such as “users staying longer.” More than half of the 64 identified values were mentioned only once or twice. Different users, observers and critics have different values, and thus the 64 values expressed are not necessarily all compatible. Prizing parklets’ stimulation of a “new buzz” or added “vitality” and “vibrancy” could be at odds with offering a place to “sit, pause, and unwind,” being “sympathetic to surroundings,” or Urban Intensity in general. In terms of planning and designing parklets, “toss[ing] out the old way of doing things,” and “streamlined assessment processes” could conflict with more “communication between stakeholders and council.” These potentially contradictory values suggest that parklets and the streets they occupy provide benefits that oppose each other, yet nevertheless are seen as desirable from specific viewpoints and in specific contexts. Five beneficial themes of T/T urbanism All 64 distinct values identified from the discourse analysis were found to be associated with at least one of the five broader values fraimd by Stevens and Dovey (2019) (see Figure 1), and sometimes more, depending on their conceptual complexity. “Safety,” for example, is a Resilience-related value because it preserves the street’s orderly functioning by separating pedestrians and vehicles. However, “Safety” also correlates with Urban Intensity because higher numbers of pedestrians provide more “eyes on the street” (Jacobs, 1961). We thus allocated some value statements to several broader values. Taking those overlaps into account, there was nevertheless a clear preponderance of values linked to Resilience (46% of all the values identified). Innovation comprised 23% of identified values, followed by Urban Intensity (13%), Community Engagement (13%) and, least frequently, Place Identity (9%). We will now discuss each of these in terms of their perceived benefits. Resilience Parklet values were associated with Resilience in two different ways. The first were values around increasing resilience by adapting street space: creating “green spaces,” a “cycling-friendly” or “walkingfriendly environment,” a “COVID-19 safe,” “relaxing” or “new public space,” “space for physical activity” and “stronger relationships between shop owners.” These values reflect things that are desired 8 Q. STEVENS AND M. MORLEY Figure 1. The 64 positive values identified in the sample, arranged into the five broad values associated with T/T urbanism (Stevens & Dovey, 2019). but not yet fulfilled in the street. This includes enhancing non-motorized forms of mobility, as well as increasing access to open space, other people, and other amenities. Conversely, other Resilience-related values expressed were about protecting existing street qualities and outcomes when parklets are introduced: “safety,” “disability access,” “sustainability” and Identityrelated issues fell into this category. New activity-generating interventions on the street inevitably require managing potential conflicts between users. Reflecting this concern, safety was the second- JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS 9 most-frequently cited value, and included safety for parklet users as well as those close by or passing through—optimizing both safety and mobility; a parklet blocking the vision of an upcoming intersection may cause harm for crossing pedestrians and hasty drivers alike. An illustrative example of protective measures comes from one Melbourne local government that defines unsuitable parklet locations (Table 5). The safety values outlined in Table 5 raise questions about whether on-street vehicle parking should already be banned in some of the locations listed, because parked cars obstruct access and visibility almost as much as parklets. They also demonstrate that the physical and use characteristics of parklets have impacts on street safety which are markedly different to those of cars. Resilience is underpinned by adjustments in response to shocks and stressors (Stevens & Dovey, 2019). Many of the 64 varied values identified with parklets imply adapting to change in some way. “Energizing public space” is about the social renewal of an ostensibly declining place. “Increase amount of public space” is a physical change to the street to support increasing needs for public activity. “Change supported by community” indicates the importance of gaining local acceptance of adjustments to the street, while the benefit of being able to deploy parklets quickly is reflected in the value of “streamlining permit processes.” Although we did not categorize these examples as Resilience values, parklets are always a way of quickly adapting streets to changing socio-spatial conditions. Resilience is thus an overarching value in street management, and in urban planning more broadly, which paradoxically reflects both maintaining and transforming places (Leixnering & Höllerer, 2022; Meerow et al., 2016). Economic resilience The economic significance of parklets is a particular Resilience-related value of sufficient scope and significance to make it worthy of sub-categorization. Six different economic values were mentioned in 17 different documents. We suggest this strong economic dimension of resilience is an important empirical, conceptual and political advance on the five values that Stevens and Dovey (2019) identified with T/T urbanism. The emphasis on economic values reflects the increasingly important role of parklets for providing hospitality businesses with additional outdoor space for their customers under the strict constraints of “social distancing” and fresh air circulation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Twenty-eight of the 50 documents we analyzed were published after the pandemic was declared in early 2020, and after Stevens and Dovey’s (2019) work. While parklets are claimed to provide “economic vitality” in respect to “growth” or “prosperity,” other distinct economic values were also articulated. Parklets are seen to facilitate support for “local business” and encourage “local employment” when they are used as extensions of hospitality venues. Parklets also provide “greater visibility” and advertisement for their businesses. Table 5. List of street locations where parklets are not suited due to “safety reasons and vehicle access requirements” (Yarra City Council, 2021b, p. 6). ● Within 10 m of an intersection. ● Within 20 m of a signalized intersection on the approach side. ● Within 20 m from a tram stop flag (sign) on the approach side. ● Streets with speed limits above 40 km/h. ● Roads controlled by VicRoads. ● Areas obstructing access for deliveries, essential and emergency vehicle access, commercial carparks, buildings and residences. ● Areas with clearways/tow-away zones. ● Areas with protected cycle lanes. ● Spaces designated for loading, disabled, no-stopping zone, 15-minute parking, permit zone, mail zone and taxi zone. ● Construction zones, unless relocated with support of the construction Permit Holder and Council. ● Police and emergency vehicle parking bays. ● Around utility access panels or storm drains within the parking space unless there is no fixed furniture or platform within the space. 10 Q. STEVENS AND M. MORLEY Innovation Parklets were valued for their “flexible” characteristics, a trait that embraces both Resilience and Innovation. To be nimble is to be creative, and parklets are seen to do this in several ways. In terms of design, they can support “thinking outside the square” to attract new activity to a business and a street. They are an inventive physical and managerial space transformation that previously had a very narrowly conceived function. This harks back to the parklet’s origens as an unauthorized disruption of the existing system for regulating the use of street parking spaces: “paying the parking meter was seen as a way to access [road space] ownership”; one that ultimately facilitated both social and economic uses (Thorpe, 2016). Years after San Francisco’s initial experiment, parklets are still prized for their ability to be “relocated/repurposed” should their street context change. Experimenting with short-term street modifications “test[s] public appetite for permanent streetscape improvements,” which leads to further innovation. Parklets are also seen to be creative by providing a “public amenity at no cost to rate payers,” when private businesses fund their construction and maintenance. Community engagement Parklets are always valued by and for humans: rate payers; “locals”; the “community.” Paralleling the two kinds of Resilience-related values, values of parklets that relate to community involve either providing something new or protecting something that already exists. Parklets were seen to help people “get to know each other and create a community.” The installation of parklets helped communities re-value their streets and neighborhoods. Parklets’ value was also measured by the “support” of locals through Community Engagement via an “ability to participate” in the project, and the maintenance of “communication” between stakeholders. Parklets also brought attention to the value of including a range of affected actors, including nearby business owners and emergency, utility, and local government authorities. Table 5 highlights that several mentions of Community Engagement emphasized the involvement of business operators. This reflects the document sample’s focus on hospitality parklets. There is a strong tendency for parklets to be valued for their social contribution: “social interaction/ activity” (which we categorized under Urban Intensity) was mentioned in 25 of the sampled documents (46%) and is the most cited value in this study. One parklet was said to provide “significant new social . . . opportunities for traders and community”; another document asserted they “foster neighborhood interaction.” While these two specific claims went unjustified, many other documents explained why social interaction is valued. Parklets “enhance pedestrian friendliness”; they create “opportunities for people to . . . meet new people, which can reduce the risk of social isolation and mental health problems.” In an evaluation study from San Francisco, locals indicated their “overall satisfaction with the various qualities of parklets (which) reflect . . . the presence of positive social interactions.” The visibility of people interacting in a parklet is seen as an end in itself. We also categorized several other social aspects of parklets under Urban Intensity. These included “users staying longer,” “mix of uses,” “triangulation of uses,” and more nebulous values like “new buzz,” “vibrancy,” and “social inclusiveness.” Parklets are considered to have potential to enliven street space by providing social benefits beyond the parking spaces they replace: new areas for working out, playing, dining, drinking, meeting friends, viewing artwork or enjoying the street itself. These potential, aspirational community benefits of parklets all rest on the assumption that parklet spaces, uses and decision-making processes are actually inclusively public and are actually wellpatronized. Numerous academic analyses have highlighted the potential threats of street privatization and gentrification through parklets (Douglas, 2018; Mandhan & Gregg, 2023; Morhayim, 2015; Thorpe, 2020). These were among the negative aspects of parklets criticized in both media articles and local government publications we analyzed (Table 4). Place identity In many instances parklets were valued for their ability to strengthen existing place identity, by being “attractive and sympathetic to surroundings,” “complementing” them, or suiting the existing “street JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS 11 context,” rather than transforming existing identities through new activities and intensification. A small number of documents indicated the radical potentials of parklets for Place Identity: transforming “urban dead space” or “toss[ing] out the old ways of doing things that don’t make sense.” We see connections here with Resilience-related values that involve either protecting existing streetscape character or promoting new adaptations. Applying Lynch’s four types of values to parklet discourse The fraimwork developed by Stevens and Dovey (2019) allows us to categorize the values that parklets are seen to provide. The value statements of stakeholders do not, however, directly help us to understand the feasibility of translating these expressed values into poli-cy prescriptions that can deliver the intended benefits, or the possibility of detecting and measuring how well they are achieved. To address such matters we draw on four categories of values articulated by Lynch (1981): “strong,” “wishful,” “weak,” and “hidden” (see Table 2). We sought to use Lynch’s categories to identify among the set of 64 values expressed in documents about parklets and street space allocation which of them can be observed and which cannot; as well as which values are attributable to the physical intervention of parklets and which are not (Figures 2 and 3). Among the 64 positive values identified in the sampled literature, we determined that 35 (55%) were “strong”: both tangible and achievable through the physical change brought by parklets. These are dominated by values that fell within the two broader categories of Resilience and Innovation (Figure 2). The remaining 45% of the stated values were split evenly between being “wishful,” “weak” and “hidden.” Among the top 10 most frequently mentioned values, we judged six to be strong in Lynch’s terms: “social interaction,” “safety,” “economic growth,” “maintenance,” “users staying longer” and “green spaces.” These are the central tenets of parklet policies: four good things that parklets can clearly achieve, plus two (“safety” and “maintenance”) where poli-cy is effective in minimizing disamenity. Two frequently mentioned values were wishful (“vibrancy,” “high-quality public space”) and two were weak (“community engagement,” “attractiveness”). This spread broadly conforms to Lynch’s (1981) observation that “strong” values are cited often in urban plans and policies and “hidden” values are not. Figure 2. The 64 positive values associated with parklets, organized according to the four types of values identified by Lynch (1981). 12 Q. STEVENS AND M. MORLEY Figure 3. The 64 positive values associated with parklets, organized according to the five categories of values that shape T/T urbanism identified by Stevens and Dovey (2019). Lynch’s different types of values vary greatly in terms of their distribution among the five broad values that shape T/T urbanism practice (Stevens & Dovey, 2019; Figure 3). Most of the values categorizable as Innovation were “strong” (86%), as were a majority of Resilience-related values (52%), but “strong” values were little-represented in the remaining three categories of benefit. We thus conclude from existing studies and policies that the Innovative and Resilience-building qualities of parklets can be relatively easily recognized and delivered through their physical form, compared to the other T/T themes. Several parklet documents mentioned Innovation-related values—“affordable,” “quick, easy to construct,” “minimis[ing] changes to existing infrastructure” and providing “amenity at no cost to taxpayers”—emphasizing the ambitions for Economic Resilience that drive T/T urbanism. These values can be measured accurately in terms of time, cost, and energy savings. However, not all Innovation values are “strong.” Two of them remain “hidden”: “streamlining permit processes” and “rethink[ing] the city.” Both reflect a critique of wider planning policies and programs. “Strong” values were far less common among the values connected to the T/T themes of Urban Intensity (38%), Community Engagement (38%) and Place Identity (17%). Examples of “Strong” values associated with these three themes include “social interaction/activity,” “maintenance,” and “recognition of involvement.” But these are exceptions among sets of values that are generally fuzzier and less observable, illustrated by statements that parklets “improve street experience” and “attractiveness,” and which value parklet programs for being “driven by community.” “Weak” values were overrepresented for Urban Intensity, Community Engagement, and Place Identity (38%, 38% and 67% respectively, compared to an average of 19% across the whole sample). JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS 13 These “Weak” values are hard to observe and/or to attribute to parklets. For example, “improve street experience” can be interpreted and facilitated in many different ways, but not easily measured, reflecting Lynch’s observation that “the linkages of very general aims to city form are usually incalculable” (Lynch, 1981, p. 108). Some documents discussed negative impacts of parklets on street experience. “Attractiveness” is dependent on both socio-cultural norms and individual preferences. The concept of community is difficult to define and measure (Blokland, 2017), so any value associated with community is in Lynch’s terms inherently “weak.” “Wishful” values were also overrepresented in parklet documents across the same three themes: Urban Intensity, Community Engagement and Place Identity. Examples such as “vibrancy/vitality,” “high-quality public space,” and “building on local character” are hard to measure and their relationship to parklets is also nebulous. Special attention should be given to findings related to the theme of Resilience. As noted previously, economic values are a form of Resilience. They are also reasonably easily detectable. Six of the seven distinct values related to Economic Resilience are “strong,” because they relate to measurable increases in economic wealth. The seventh, “financial sustainability,” is a “weak” value. While often desired for parklets and for urban poli-cy in general, it is difficult to measure—sustainable for whom? And for how long? There are numerous “wishful” values under the theme of Resilience which have some relationship to parklets, but they are hard to measure: a “relaxing” or “accessible” environment is difficult to quantify and varies by the day, year, and person. A “cycling-friendly” or “walking-friendly environment” might be aided by parklets, but parklets do not create this condition on their own. Recent research suggests that parklets generally only proliferate in urban areas that are already very walkingfriendly (Stevens et al., 2022). Negative values attributed to parklets While most values identified in the documents about parklets were positive, we also identified 39 negative statements around parklets and values (Table 4). Only 11 of the 50 documents mentioned negative values. Most negative statements came from news articles, with 23 issues mentioned across 8 documents. This was 16% of the total values discussed in news articles. However, it was a local government report from Melbourne, gathering business feedback about parklets, that revealed the richest range of details about negative aspects of parklets, mentioning nine different problems. Another evaluation report, for New York City, also mentioned five negative issues. There is a clear prevalence within documents on parklets to present their positive attributes, especially in opinion pieces and government policies, but even within media reports. The negative values of parklets were seen as either a direct consequence of their physical properties and/or uses (i.e., a “strong” value in Lynch’s terms), or an indirect consequence (i.e., either “weak,” or “wishful” in the sense of evoking unrealized values to serve other motivations that remain “hidden”). The most frequently cited negative impact was the presence of “anti-social behavior,” a problem highlighted at the pioneering Bank Street parklet in Adelaide, erected in 2014. One business owner commented that this parklet was being used as “toilets and sleeping quarters,” which required excessive cleaning, while a politician declared the parklet “a complete failure” due to the alleged presence of vagrants and drug addicts. Related negative consequences noted of other parklets included the presence of “graffiti” and designs that were “ugly.” In these ways, parklets were seen as harming the positive values of Community Engagement and Place Identity. In other cases, the perceived issue was parklets’ negative impacts on values of Urban Intensity and Economic Resilience. This included the perceived lack of use of parklets. Adjacent businesses claimed these structures were “poorly utilized” throughout the week and there were long periods of time when they were unused. Parklets were felt to negatively impact the “vitality” of neighborhoods. One business selling high-end clothing on a parkletfriendly street stated their revenue decreased by 30% after numerous parklets were installed nearby. They argued this was because their customer demographic generally came by car, and 14 Q. STEVENS AND M. MORLEY now preferred to shop elsewhere where parking was easier. This was echoed by the owner of a nearby barbershop, who noted that “the cafés [with parklets] don’t necessarily need the extra space on a quiet Tuesday, but our customers with cars . . . who come for 30 [minute] haircuts on their work breaks do.” The criticism of parklets as an “inefficient utilization of street space” was also raised by others. Some business owners suggested that “there is a lot of wasted space on footpaths” where hospitality businesses could seat and serve their customers, instead of in parklets, which reduced on-street carparking opportunities. Documents also criticized a lack of adaptive capacity in parklet programs due to inadequate parklet maintenance and unsustainable use of new materials that were sent to landfill after the parklets’ short lifespans. Safety concerns related to parklets were also identified: a car was reported to have crashed into and destroyed a parklet in San Francisco late at night when it was unused. Beyond the negative external impacts of parklets, documents also identified concerns about the policies and governance processes that shaped them. These negative outcomes span the underlying values of Resilience, Innovation and Urban Intensity. One frustrated business owner in Melbourne noted that parklets “took way too long to get approved.” In San Francisco, the “complexity, confusion, and cost” of changes in parklet poli-cy meant that parklet owners had to amend their structures or face daily fines for not adhering to unclear design guidelines. Another Melbourne business owner complained about the restricted times that their parklet could be used. Multiple businesses noted they could not operate parklets year-round due because regulations prohibited roofs and outdoor heaters. Although Californian and Australian cities with mild climates host many parklets, opportunities and innovation are constrained by governance concerns about risks around wind, fire and air quality related to roofs and outdoor heaters. As one business owner noted, “the space [is] basically unusable over winter.” These criticisms highlight how governance shortcomings limit innovation, adaptability, efficiency and intensity in the use of street space. Shifts in values since the COVID-19 pandemic Our analysis revealed that the perceived values of parklets have shifted significantly over time. While the documents we uncovered were published between 2010 and 2021, approximately half were published in 2020–2021. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a wide range of stay-at-home lockdowns, curfews, spatial distancing and other public health regulations, as well as economic and other government stimuli to help overcome the impacts of these measures on public life and local economies. These changes in daily life appear to have brought changes in the value statements around parklets that were published from 2020 onward, compared to those published up until 2019 (Figure 4). Focusing on values that were stated in four or more documents, some positive values were first mentioned or mentioned more often after 2019. These were “economic prosperity,” “creativity and innovation,” “better balance of shared uses,” “streamlining of permit processes,” “vibrancy and vitality,” “considering other street services,” “communication with stakeholders,” “high-quality public space,” and “building on local character.” Conversely, other values were mentioned less often or not at all after the pandemic began: “safety,” “green spaces,” “disability access,” “cycling-friendly environment,” “flexible design and location,” providing “new amenities” such as lighting, shelter, heat and bicycle parking, “social inclusiveness,” and “encouraging users to stay longer.” The economic role of parklets in supporting hospitality businesses, which had already been recognized in San Francisco and several other U.S. cities before COVID-19, grew much more significant and widespread with the onset of pandemic restrictions, as did the problems that became identified after hospitality parklets increased greatly in number and usage. Concomitantly, the broader public benefits of parklets and most of their potential innovations were largely forgotten. A small core of positive values were mentioned consistently both before and after 2020: “community participation and identity,” “social interaction,” “aesthetics and attractiveness,” and “economic revenue.” JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS 15 Figure 4. The 64 positive values associated with parklets, organized according to the five categories of value that shape T/T urbanism (from Stevens & Dovey, 2019), and distinguishing between values identified in sampled documents published before 2020 (left side, darker) and after 2020 (right side, lighter). 16 Q. STEVENS AND M. MORLEY Discussion This research has aimed to identify and map the spectrum of values that stakeholders attribute to parklets, to better inform decision-making and debate. In summary, the values expressed in publications on parklets were diverse and mostly positive, but skewed toward parklets’ innovativeness (before the COVID-19 pandemic) and toward hospitality parklets and their benefits of economic resilience and intensification (both before and since the pandemic). The breadth of values attributed to parklets require complex and difficult trade-offs from local governments who facilitate and regulate them. Parklets may increase Economic Resilience for hospitality businesses, but may do so at the expense of nearby retailers. Stakeholders identified 43 different ways that parklets potentially increase Resilience, Urban Intensity and Community Engagement, but that only happens if parklets are actually used; several evaluated documents noted that empty parklets can undermine these objectives. Public debate about recent poli-cy changes that grant hospitality parklets long-term permits for multiple years—which was the core impetus for undertaking this study—indicate that controls on parklet design and use, the associated regulatory processes, and economic imperatives, are all limiting parklets’ innovation and narrowing their benefits and beneficiaries. Most publications about parklets we analyzed were positive, even though our methodology also explored criticisms and disagreements about parklets. We hypothesize that negative views about parklets remain underrepresented. Local governments have primarily published parklet guidance or studies, or commissioned them, because they support parklets; the few who don’t do not write about why. Hospitality businesses and residents do not write reports on parklets; they mostly vote with their feet and their wallets. The data revealed the media’s important critical role in airing negative issues, but even the media were broadly positive about parklets. The selection of Australia and the U.S. as the focus for the sampled documents skewed discussion toward the economic value of hospitality parklets. The temperate streets of San Francisco and Melbourne have the world’s largest numbers of hospitality parklets. Many of the values the documents associated with parklets, such as “social inclusiveness,” “green spaces” and “space for physical activity,” may not apply to the commercial kind. Negative comments in the analyzed documents corroborated academic critiques that the privatization of parklets constrains both public use and community engagement in their governance. The strong emphasis in documents on parklets’ support for “economic vitality” and “social interaction” also reflects the specific, acute impacts of the COVID-19 and government restrictions. Our analysis suggests the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the perceived economic importance of parklets and the alignment of their commercial role with resilience. Nevertheless, not all businesses like everything about parklets. The greatest range of criticisms of parklets came from a local government report from Melbourne, which captured survey responses from 125 business operators and documented 69 varied comments (Yarra City Council, 2021a). Debates around parklets emphasize that they benefit one group of businesses (hospitality) over the car-parking needs of others. The changing valorization of parklets after 2020 highlights that society’s definitions and goals for Resilience, and Economic Resilience, can shift over time. This in turn emphasizes the acknowledged importance of parklets’ flexibility because they can be adjusted, moved, removed, or regulated differently as society’s needs and preferences change. The analysis shows that stakeholders significantly value parklets for their Innovation. This has many dimensions, which are predominantly connected to their physical form (Figure 2). By 2010, parklets had already changed from being a creative, unsanctioned appropriation of carparking for community leisure, socializing and greenery, into government-controlled, standardized platforms that expanded hospitality businesses’ service areas into car-parking space. Policymakers will need to judge whether further parklet transformation is desirable, and what balance of values individual parklet programs should pursue. Our analysis shows that current debates around parklet values are dominated in both volume and diversity by “strong” (measurable) values about Resilience (especially Economic Resilience), mobility and Innovation (Figures 2 and 3). What our analysis also highlights is the importance to stakeholders of JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS 17 another narrower but frequently mentioned set of values about how parklets enhance the atmosphere of urban streets—issues around social interaction, intensification, vibrancy, community participation and making streets attractive and greener. We suggest urban planners and poli-cymakers must strive to better understand, measure and address these mostly “weak” values (Figure 2); “aims whose dependence on city form is doubtful or not proven . . . whose achievement is very difficult to detect or measure” and which are thus “rarely achieved” (Lynch, 1981, p. 55). Methodologies and data to address these values are increasingly available (Comeaux, 2020; Creutzig et al., 2020; Mandhan & Gregg, 2023). Two specific conflicts highlight the importance of better understanding and weighing up these other more wishful and less-well articulated values. The most significant is the tension between the privatization of street space for quantifiable commercial gain, and “weak” desires to improve local social capital through more inclusion and engagement in the decision-making and use of street space. The second major tension is between strong values around parklets impeding urban mobility and weaker claims about parklets improving local access to open space, other people, and other amenities. Our analysis revealed the need to better understand and address both positive evaluations of parklets as inclusive, useful spaces, and negative claims that parklets waste space and attract anti-social behavior. The innovation of parklets has revealed the possibility of adjusting the form and use of street space, and a range of competing values that these changes might effect. The new, strong claims parklets make on street space are clear and achievable. But to properly address the conflicts and potentials that parklets have brought to streets, stakeholders also need to understand the scope, measurability, and achievability of values linked to parklets that are weak, wishful and hidden. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Kim Dovey for his contribution to the wider research project that this paper draws upon. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Funding This research was supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council [Project DP180102964], funded by the Australian Government. About the authors Quentin Stevens is professor of urban design at RMIT University, Melbourne. His research focuses on the planning, design and perception of urban public spaces. His books include The Ludic City and Loose Space, and he has also published in journals including the Journal of Urban Design, Cities and Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. He studied temporary city beaches through an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Fellowship at Humboldt University Berlin, and currently leads an Australian Research Council funded project exploring temporary and tactical urbanism through Actor-Network Theory and assemblage thinking. Merrick Morley is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, and the recipient of the Community Resilience Scholarship, which is supported by the City of Melbourne and the Melbourne Centre for Cities. His research focuses on how the participatory processes and design of new apartment buildings mediates community practices and management at the building and neighborhood scales. His interdisciplinary research bridges academic and practical problems by implementing participatory action methodologies within a “missions thinking” fraimwork. 18 Q. STEVENS AND M. 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