The new GRTC bus wrap in front of the Science Museum of Virginia. Image by Wyatt Gordon.

Despite its status as Richmond’s most prominent corridor, Broad Street isn’t one of the city’s most pleasant prominades. After the train tracks that used to run down its center were removed, the street became something of a surface highway with wide lanes, speeding cars, and often unsafe crossings. Its lack of trees and many black asphalt parking lots also make it one of Richmond’s most sweltering areas. By converting a 381 space surface parking lot into a new public park, the Science Museum of Virginia hopes to show folks that the city can rebuild a more comfortable and climate resilient future for its main boulevard if only we’re willing to depave it.

Hot in, so hot in herre

Temperatures in Richmond’s largely concrete urban core regularly reach extremes 16 degrees warmer than in leafier parts of town. Such a 10-20 degree temperature difference between neighborhoods is quite common in American cities where decades of disinvestment have left many inner-city, non-white neighborhoods with fewer trees and far more pavement. Residents of formerly redlined neighborhoods have long known this disparity existed, but the issue only became a citywide priority after a map of urban heat vulnerability in Richmond made the disparities impossible to ignore.

Adding to the issue is Richmond’s dearth of parkland compared to peer cities. According to the Trust for Public Land the River City received a Parskcore ranking of 45 out of nearly 100 American cities. Only 7% of city land is used for parks and recreation compared to nearly three times as much in the other 99 cities surveyed. A closer look reveals that the issue may be worse than the data shows as parcels counted as greenspace include cemeteries, road medians, and schoolyards that may not actually allow for safe or public access.

Wedged between Broad Street, Scott’s Addition, the Diamond District, and the most dystopian Department of Motor Vehicles location you may ever see, the Science Museum of Virginia knows what it is like to exist in an urban heat island.

“We have more paved surfaces than we have dedicated to parks in the city,” explained Dr. Jeremy Hoffman, the chief scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia. “We are right next door to Scott’s Addition, a post-industrial area defined by wide streets, short buildings, and few greenspaces. The Diamond to the north of us is the single most paved over city neighborhood, and the Arthur Ashe Boulevard intersection there is perfectly designed to amplify heat. One of our main motivating factors behind this project is to provide a shady oasis in this part of town.”

Park > parking

Given the fact that current infrastructure doesn’t allow the vast majority of the commonwealth to access the Science Museum without a car, the parking had to stay, but staff realized they could consolidate the spots into one three story garage to make space for better uses of the institution’s prime land along the Greater Richmond Transit Company’s Pulse BRT route. The work to remove the 381 surface lot spots may be Richmond’s greatest depaving event to date.

Thermal imaging of the Science Museum parking lot pre-depaving.

As the former parking lot slowly becomes a verdant park (the project is slated to be complete by next spring), Hoffman plans to measure the changes in surface and air temperatures in the area using a thermal camera mounted atop the museum to show the effectiveness of depaving as an urban heat mitigation strategy. The long-term hope is that other property owners and state institutions in the area with large surface lots may see the value of depaving and similarly shift their parking underground, stack it in a deck, or get rid of it altogether as Broad Street transitions to a more transit-oriented area.

Other issues Hoffman hopes to measure via the new greenspace include stormwater management, urban biodiversity, and particulate matter. “Once the park is fully established we can redo these studies for years in a row to tell the story of how remaking a desolate surface parking lot into a functioning ecosystem can reinvite nature back into the city,” Hoffman said.

Bus wrap branding

To better tell the tale of the transformation taking place on the Science Museum’s grounds, the institution partnered with GRTC on a parking to park bus wrap. Unveiled last month, the bus shows the choice that faces overpaved urban areas: leave large areas as surface lots or make room for better uses of the area including new greenspaces for folks to walk, bike, and find refuge in.

The action is part of a long-standing partnership between the two government-owned organizations that began years ago with the Science Museum offering free admission to anyone who showed a GRTC bus pass upon arrival. With GRTC now zero-fare for the last two plus years (and potentially permanently), the Science Museum continues to offer free admission to anyone who takes the bus to visit.

To commemorate the latest iteration of the two institution’s teamwork, the Science Museum created a special parking to park webpage explaining the interplay of redlining and urban heat islands as well as listing every park in the region accessible via a GRTC route. With vast swathes of Richmond lacking safe sidewalks, protected bike lanes, and frequent transit service, the focus on park access was at the top of speakers’ minds at the bus wrap unveiling.

“The conversation we need to have is how can people use the bus to get to greenspaces?” said GRTC CEO Julie Timm. “So many times we hear, ‘Well I can’t get to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden or Pony Pastures because the bus doesn’t go there,’ but there are over 100 different parks, greenspaces, museums, and cemeteries within a reasonable walking distance of our bus routes in the region.”

Correction: According to the Trust for Public Land, Richmond received a Parkscore ranking of 45 out of nearly 100 cities. It did not rank 85th out of 100 for equitable access to greenspaces as was previously reported. The article has been updated to reflect the change.

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Tagged: grtc, public spaces, richmond, transit, virginia

Wyatt Gordon is the senior policy manager for land use and transportation at the Virginia Conservation Network, and an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Urban Planning. He's a born-and-raised Richmonder with a master's in Urban Planning from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and a bachelor's in International Political Economy from American University.