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On the southwest corner of Salsbury and Napier Streets, a block from Vancouver\u2019s Commercial Drive, Penny Street and Stephen Holmes set up a bench and a bookshelf.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a grand opening with the Balkan Schmalkan<\/a> band,\u201d remembered Street, standing on the corner one Tuesday afternoon. \u201cAll the neighbours came out and all the kids got to pull the ribbon off and unveil it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019ll be four years ago next March,\u201d reflected Holmes.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore that, I had been hassling him for two years to build it,\u201d responded Street.<\/p>\n These neighbourhood embellishments are often called parkettes or mini-parks. The City of Vancouver manages its own parkettes, but this one on Salsbury is different.<\/p>\n Because it was established bottom-up by locals, city planners and designers would call it an act of \u201curban intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n Holmes and Street have lived on this block for 20 years. They were inspired to install a book exchange of their own after seeing one nearby on Charles and Lakewood Streets.<\/p>\n That exchange sits on a little peninsula that juts out into the street as a traffic-calming measure \u2014 no cars, bikes only.<\/p>\n Before they built the Salsbury parkette there was a community garden on the corner, made up of the yards of two adjacent houses (BC Mills \u201cprefabs\u201d from 1907).<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody in the neighbourhood used it,\u201d Street said of the garden, \u201cfor picnics and sometimes sleep outs. There were also a few homeless people that would sleep there.\u201d<\/p>\n The two properties were eventually redeveloped and the garden removed. However, the couple noticed something unusual on the corner: a small bit of city-owned property known as an easement. It seemed like the perfect place for their book exchange.<\/p>\n \u201cWe never asked permission to put it in,\u201d said Street. \u201cWe thought it\u2019d be easier to apologize after.\u201d<\/p>\n Holmes, a retired carpenter, built the bookshelf \u2014 \u201cmake sure to use Plexiglas instead of glass for safety,\u201d he advised \u2014 and the couple moved a spare bench from their backyard to the corner. They named it the \u201cSalsbury Garden Book House\u201d to \u201ckeep the memory alive of that community space.\u201d<\/p>\n The results, Holmes said, were \u201cvery satisfying.\u201d Many people who used it were on their way home from the Drive, musicians who stopped to play a tune or seniors taking a breather at the bench after a walk uphill.<\/p>\n The book exchange has its own kids\u2019 section, and grandparents sit with their grandkids to enjoy a book. Like at all good benches, Holmes has also noticed some \u201cromantic interludes.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a place for meetings of many kinds, Street said. And homeless people have returned to sleep there, a throwback to the days when the spot was a community garden.<\/p>\n When I chatted with Street and Holmes at the corner, a jogger stopped and leaned one leg on a rock that\u2019s part of the landscaping to rest. He said hi.<\/p>\n Bruce Macdonald, a heritage advocate who lives in the area, thinks of the parkette as a throwback to the neighbourhood\u2019s \u201cslower days before the automobile, when people relaxed on their front porches in the evening.\u201d<\/p>\n The neighbourliness of the Salsbury corner sounds picture-perfect, but before you go sticking a bookshelf in your own neighbourhood, you need to know about the kinds of people who live near you and their needs.<\/p>\n \u201cSpaces are activated according to the patterns of the community,\u201d said Paty Rios, a researcher who specializes in social wellbeing with urban planning and design group Happy City.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to make sure you understand the demographics. It\u2019s about more than just coming up with a great idea. So if there\u2019s a senior population, one of the things that\u2019s always going to be a priority is seats.\u201d<\/p>\n Commercial Drive has always been known for arts and counterculture, so it\u2019s no surprise that the Salsbury book exchange does well. Also, Vancouver is an expensive city, and two Toronto researchers found<\/a> last year that little lending libraries are more common in wealthier neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n In a different area, a book exchange might not be the social urban intervention the neighbourhood needs. Instead, it might be a new place to play a sport or a game like chess.<\/p>\n In Vancouver\u2019s hip Mount Pleasant, someone did some guerrilla gardening<\/a> and planted marijuana plants in traffic circles, with much debate about whether it was a blight or boon.<\/p>\n Guerrilla gardening is also not uncommon<\/a> in dense Hong Kong, where gardeners have grown everything from sweet potatoes to mango trees.<\/p>\n But what should city governments do when they see unexpected interventions pop up that might be bending the rules?<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a tricky question,\u201d said Rios. \u201cWhen neighbours organize collectively to do something for themselves, it should generate a red light to the city about what the community needs \u2014 as long as it\u2019s not affecting others\u2019 lives in a negative way.\u201d<\/p>\n Urban inventions are rarer in suburbia, because there\u2019s less foot traffic and homes are more spaced out, said Rios. That\u2019s not to say there\u2019s no sense of community in suburbs, but that it tends to be more formal and intentional than informal and serendipitous.<\/p>\n At the Salsbury corner, Street and Holmes are constantly surprised by what they see.<\/p>\n \u201cIn front of the roof of the book exchange, there\u2019s a little space,\u201d said Holmes. \u201cOne day, somebody stuck a carved wooden mask in there. It fit perfectly \u2014 here\u2019s a little face looking down on you. And the colours went with the colours of the bookcase. The next day, it was gone.<\/p>\n \u201cA month later, it showed up again! So OK, this time I\u2019m going to make sure you can\u2019t take it away. I didn\u2019t want to run screws through it or anything because the wood was pretty soft. So I put a block in there to jam it in. Two days later, it was gone again.\u201d<\/p>\n Whatever the urban intervention, it will require consistent care. When people who smoked on the bench threw their butts on the ground, the couple added a bucket to the corner, which solved the problem.<\/p>\n And visitors can be greedy. \u201cSometimes when people put a lot of good books in there, we\u2019ve noticed over the last few years that somebody else takes all of the good ones!\u201d said Street. She worries that someone is taking them to sell to Commercial Drive\u2019s many used bookstores.<\/p>\n Street has a stamp with \u201cNot for resale: This book comes from a community book box\u201d on it, devised by the neighbours who watch over a nearby box. She doesn\u2019t like to use it on the shelf\u2019s books, but she says doing so is better than someone reselling them.<\/p>\n Sometimes, the problem can be that people are too generous. Last week, somebody left a pile of architecture books and magazines on the bench, large, glossy volumes, some of them in Italian. Street had to take them home and add them to the shelf in small batches.<\/p>\n \u201cWe get very good turnover,\u201d said Holmes.<\/p>\n The parkette\u2019s four-year anniversary is approaching, but it still has a lot to teach the neighbourhood about itself, though there\u2019s no doubt about how well it\u2019s already fit in.<\/p>\n \u201cLots of people help maintain it. They\u2019ll come by and straighten things out,\u201d said Holmes. \u201cThey do it because they own part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Christopher Cheung<\/strong> is a reporter at The Tyee<\/a> where this story originally appeared.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"