Monday, February 28, 2011



 Above are shown a bunch  of Park Chelsea supporters sitting throughout 
Park Chelsea on folding chairs, tree pit guards, milk crates
and whatever else they can scrounge up to sit on 
Click here for images of some of our myraid supporters



View Park Chelsea-Chelsea's Age Friendly Park in a larger map
(note Google recently upgraded their maps software, this broke our pushpins, will be fixed sometime soon)
 
Chelsea's Citibenches
Getting to The Three Minute Park

 The Secret Parks of Chelsea 
  Senior Seating 
 Centralized Parks 
 To request a seat near your street Click here




Park Chelsea:
A proposal to reclaim Chelsea's streets and sidewalks for the people of Chelsea

I took a walk throughout Chelsea to look at its parks, playgrounds, outdoor cafes, and public plazas. I found that the basic shared characteristic is that they are a place where a person can sit down and relax. Some of them have more amenities, grass, trees, food, basketball courts, but what is common to all of them, at the most basic level, is that a person can park themselves.

 The Three Amigos
Three news boxes enjoying a sunny afternoon on the streets of Chelsea

Now, if you walk through the streets of Chelsea you will find the following: on every block there is car parking, and motorcycle parking, and you'll also find on our streets parked wastebaskets, bicycles, fire hydrants, telephone booths, trees, newspaper racks, parking meters and other inanimate objects. But what you'll rarely find in Chelsea is a place for people to park. What is evident is that the design of our city outdoor spaces has evolved in favor of automobiles and other inanimate objects, not humans, who have been relegated to a few and generally far between parks, playgrounds and plazas. Our streets are currently designed to be thoroughfares for people to go from one place to another as opposed to them being destinations in and of themselves.

"... for the last 50 years, city streets have been managed less for the benefit of neighborhoods they serve and more for the traffic passing through them. . . Although most of its residents travel by foot, transit or bicycle New York City streets prioritize drivers" -- Blueprint for the Upper West Side

The same area in Chelsea,Manhattan circa 2011

Prior to the arrival of Western civilization, the area now know as Chelsea was a place where its inhabitants could sit down and relax anyplace.. We cannot turn back the clock in a way that will allow us to sit and relax on any spot in Chelsea. However what we can do is to redesign the streets and sidewalks of current day Chelsea in a way that will recapture a bit of people-friendly Chelsea of yesteryear.

The Park Chelsea Goal:
To place a  park like environment
within a minute or two walk of everyone in Chelsea.


To learn more about how we intend to transform Chelsea into ParkChelsea click on this link