The Environmental Health Clinic, based at NYU, is a clinic and lab, just like other health clinics at universities, but with one big exception: this clinic dispenses prescriptions for solving your local environmental concerns (rather than your individual health concerns).
Here is how it works:
You make an appointment, just like you would at a traditional health clinic, to talk about your particular environmental health concerns. The 'doctors' review the ailment and you walk out with a prescription not for pharmaceuticals but for actions.
On the symptoms of degraded urban water quality, overflowing and polluted storm drainage, west nile virus, pedestrian walkway slipping hazards and excessive sidewalk dog pee they recently have prescribed No Park Gardens.
No Parks are the systematic replacement of all fire hydrant related no-parking zones with small street level gardens. For the 0.1% of the time that area is needed for a true emergency, first responders can simply drive over the top, but for the other 99.9% of the time, they solve many problems.
Environmental Health Clinic Staff calculate that with all of New York's no parking zones converted, there would be no need for storm drainage for a rain event up to 8 inches. It would all be absorbed and naturally filtered by the gardens and the improved and increased ground water will benefit street trees. Gardens would also eliminate puddling that often occurs near and in drains thereby reducing West Nile Virus and city dogs will surely be attracted to peeing here more than on other areas of pedestrian usage. And do we need to mention the loveliness of mini gardens at every corner?
To find out more about creating a No Park near you visit Environmental Health Clinic. Also see Studio 'g' to read more about the idea (including watching a TED presentation about the idea and the clinic given by founder Natalie Jeremijenko).
image via studio 'g'
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This is pretty awesome. It could even make it easier for firefighters to locate the nearest hydrant. I wonder how Chicago would feel about something like this? I just hope no trees start growing in the new park.
Wow. That is wild. The website owners could make it a tad easier if they made a non-flash site, this one might be hard to download for people with slower internet speeds. But I'm all for this - please keep us updated!
An old study in Conservation Biology journal found that those types of city trees act as corridors for birds in larger forest patches - so it helps wildlife too!
Awesome!
This is a brilliant idea! I'm moving to NYC in a few months and I would love to help with this effort.
I would love to support this. But:
- in my urban neighborhood, fire hydrant zones are used by service delivery trucks, including the postal service
- this is squatting, and no different from placing pingpong tables or low-priced, immigrant vending carts in the zones, and claiming that both are a public service.
- I think it's Chicago that has a big problem with people putting chairs out in the street to hold parking spaces. Same thing, squatting.
Once you accept the premise that some members of the public have a unilateral right to determine the use of public property, you encourage others to do the same thing.