Parklet

The first thing you notice is, a NO PARKING strip adjacent to a rectangle of sidewalk painted green.  There are bike parking stanchions, but cars can't park there until you get to the green painted part.

It turns out that there's sort of a parklet in our neighborhood in front of the Joe Bean coffee shop on University Ave.  I say "sort of" because a parklet should replace some parking spaces with a micro-park.  Instead, this replaces some of the grassy strip between the main width of sidewalk and the parking spots on the street.

Located as it is next to a coffee shop in an otherwise much-less-walkable part of the neighborhood, it's clearly an attempt to build foot traffic.  I don't know how well this "if you build it they will come" approach works: these pictures were taken at 10:30 on a Saturday.

But it's a step in the right direction.  City streets ought to be for people first, cars second.  Next time, I would love to see the parklet's bollards preventing access to the newly-decommissioned parking spots.

Try streetview in the linked map to see how inviting to pedestrians this block is.  For a contrast, you can compare it (using streetview) to Cafe Sasso (739 Park, which is only 0.6 miles away), or Spot Coffee (200 East Ave, 1.6 miles).

The parklet in front of Joe Bean is here, if you want to check it out:

If you don't want to check it out, well, it's still there.

Admit it, you would have been disappointed if I hadn't done that.