Rice researchers, alumni and staff create imaginative spaces in downtown Houston

Parking Day is an international movement to re-imagine urban space. The Rice Design Alliance (RDA) organized the first centralized Parking Day in downtown Houston Sept. 18. The various groups that participated, including Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research and the RDA, created 14 “parklets.” “The goal is to disrupt the ordinary,” Allyn West, assistant director of RDA, said of the movement. “Quite a lot of downtown Houston is given away to parking. So this is what would happen if we gave that over to public space.”