Cambridge PARK(ing) Day, Third Friday in September
Tiny parks will be popping up on parking spots throughout the city this Friday for the 4th annual Cambridge PARK(ing) Day celebration. Robert Paul Properties is pleased to be part of dozens of businesses, community organizations, and city departments that are transforming parking spots into temporary public parks for the day.
This year, Robert Paul Properties will be promoting the tiny house movement with Cambridge Realtor Terrie Hayden, as head visionary. Terrie and Sarah Hastings, a builder and owner of her own Tiny Home – “Rhizhome” located in Hadley, MA, have teamed up to bring sustainability and regeneration to the people of Cambridge.
Terrie is excited to let the public in on the tiny house craze. She has been selling 300+/- square foot studios since 2002 and she “LOVES small space living”. It is Terrie’s passion to see more people own homes, no matter what size. One day, she hopes to establish a Tiny House Village of her own in Somerville or Cambridge.
Tiny House Movement
For many people, the prospect of a clean, simple, low-impact lifestyle is very appealing. This is fully embodied by the Tiny House movement, and Robert Paul Properties is taking advantage of Cambridge’s PARK(ing) DAY event to help introduce the lifestyle to a wider audience. In front of the Robert Paul office at 1693 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Sarah Hastings, builder and owner of her own Tiny Home, will have a full scale Tiny House floor plan drawn out in a single parking space so participants can get a better sense of this compact living option and why it is working so well for so many. Sarah will also have a model of her own home with photos of her building process, and will answer questions for interested parties.
Sarah Hastings’ Tiny Home
“As city spaces get smaller and smaller to accommodate our growing urban population, I find it so interesting how many people opt for this simplified lifestyle across the country in both open and dense areas,” noted Terrie Hayden, agent and lead organizer for Robert Paul Properties’ participation in this year’s event. “As so many of us choose to live in less space, be it by choice or necessity, there is a lot to be learned from this movement. Since a Tiny Home is essentially the size of a parking space, what better day to exemplify its utility than PARK(ing) DAY! We really hope people stop by to learn about the highlights and lowlights of Tiny Home living.”
Our “Home Sweet Home” park will also have a children’s reading area with loveseat and pillow, where our Cambridge realtors will be reading books all about Home and Moving to children of all ages.
Cambridge PARK(ing) Day 2015
Cambridge PARK(ing) Day 2015 Interactive Map
PARK(ing) Day was created as a worldwide event to bring attention to the need for more open space in urban areas. You can have a lot of fun and learn a lot by stopping by more than 60 of these parks throughout Cambridge.
Check out the official map of PARK(ing) Day 2015, so you can plan your day to visit the “parks”. We’re #41 on the map on Mass Ave between Harvard and Porter – be sure to visit our park at 1693 Massachusetts Ave between 9am-5pm, Friday, September 18th.
About Sarah Hastings
Sarah Hastings
“When my ideas grow, my hands get dirty!” Having studied architecture and geoscience at Mount Holyoke College, she orchestrated her education into a resilient, interdisciplinary lifestyle. Sarah’s primary investigation during undergrad was to design and build her own tiny house in order to fully integrate her passions for research and design into morning, noon, and night. Her plans to construct her tiny house successfully materialized into her senior thesis in the spring of 2015. This was quite the Walden approach, and although she enjoys the aloof wilderness, her professional intentions are actually less Thoreauvian. Sarah shares her thoughts, “My soul goal is to innovate using modern technology and material salvage, making this simple, yet insightful lifestyle accessible to others. I am travelling to Cambridge to participate in PARK(ing) Day, to connect with like-minded individuals, and share ideas. My tiny house endeavor reflects my deep responsibility for social and environmental well-being. How exciting it is to watch this tiny house movement grow! I made a conscious decision that ‘Sustainability and Regeneration’ shall not be simply buzzwords in my life! ”
About PARK(ing) Day
PARK(ing) Day is an annual international event where residents, artists and activists come together to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places. The project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco. Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with organizations and individuals creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts around the world.
The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat … at least until the meter runs out!