Living and Securitizing Parklets in San Francisco

In 2010, San Francisco's Planning Department converted two parking spots into a small leisure park in an attempt to increase public space and human interaction in the city, and support local businesses. This temporary sidewalk extension, called a 'parklet', came to spur a city-wide, and later on global, movement of parklet-building. Today, the parklet form is a globally celebrated sidewalk-remake. Parklets are always public space, yet cleaned, securitized and attended to by a sponsoring business or organization.
This research aims at studying the lived experience of San Francisco's parklets. The research is primarily interested in the particulars of carrying out, and the effects of efforts to securitize and 'clean' the parklet space, for different social groups (for example differentiated by class, race, ablebodiedness and gender) that live and dwell in and nearby parklets. I am furthermore interested in how the Parklets embody, generate or juxtapose dwellers' ideas about the city the parklet appears in. The research will follow these primary research questions:
o How are parklets in San Francisco experienced, lived and contested by different people and actors?
o What does the 'maintenance' and securitization of parklets in San Francisco entail and result in for people of different social groups (differentiated along perceived race, class, ablebodiedness, gander, housing status and assumed commercial capability)?
o What does the lived experience of parklets in San Francisco convey about the effects of securitizing efforts in the contemporary sidewalk at large?
At the time of writing, this research builds on primarily three bodies of academic literature. The first includes literature on San Francisco's history and present day urban landscape. I engage with this literature to ensure that the research builds on an historically grounded understanding of San Francisco. The second body of literature engages with the making, operating, controlling, and challenging of invisible spatial boundaries. Here, I aim to engage with scholars such as Don Mitchell, Jeff Rose, Jordan Camp and Anne McClintock. This body of literature is employed to think through what spatial borders surround, intersect or are challenged by the parklet space and its dwellers. The third body of literature is employed to provide theoretical lenses for thinking about how the parklet "thinks about itself", or said differently, what aesthetics it employs. Primary scholars in this body of work include Ryan Centner, Asher Ghertner, and Annette Miae Kim. I engage with this literature to think through what role the parklet is perceived to play in the public sidewalk, and what consequences that perceived self-identity may have.
The research will build on ethnographic fieldwork in the form of participatory observations and semi-structured interviews as well as oral histories. Furthermore, some archival data such as planning documents regarding parklets and recordings/minutes from public hearings and meetings will be analyzed. I additionally hope to interview public officials that work with parklets directly. I employ these methods to gain a full understanding of how parklets are lived, understood and possibly contested. I plan to engage with feminist epistemology and methods throughout the entirety of the PhD.