A Brief History of the Short-Term Parklet in Australia

This paper examines the history within Australia of the ‘parklet’, a small architecturally-framed open space installed temporarily on an on-street car-parking space. The paper traces parklets’ varied and evolving forms, materials, production processes and functions. It examines how parklets have adapted to rapidly-changing social needs and priorities for economic activity, health, safety, socialising and on-street parking, and changes in street function. The contemporary parklet began in 2005 as a localised, grassroots activity to temporarily reclaim street space for public leisure, as part of the wider movement of ‘tactical urbanism’. Parklets rapidly became a worldwide phenomenon. Starting in 2008, 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. From 2012, commercial parklet programs were developed in Australian cities to encourage local businesses to expand into street parking spaces, to calm traffic and enhance pedestrian amenity. A new generation of commercial ‘café parklets’ has emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, facilitated by local governments, to support the heavily-impacted hospitality industry. Their design and construction show ongoing innovation, increasing scale and professionalism, but also standardisation. This paper draws on diverse Australian parklet examples to chart the emergence of varying approaches to their design and construction, which draw upon different materials, skills, local government strategies and international precedents. The findings also illustrate several convergences in the evolution of parklet design across different Australian cities, due to strong similarities in the spatial contexts, needs, risk factors, and technologies that have defined this practice.