Riga: Transforming a parking lot back into a theatre square
The Challenge
The lack of green spaces in Riga’s city centre and the quality of public space is often mentioned by residents as one of the main things they would want to improve in the city. However, planting new trees and greenery in Riga is challenging, especially in the city centre, where creating new green spaces can take a lot of time and demand a lot of resources.
Meanwhile, until 2021, Riga’s Theatre Square had become an illegal parking lot and a dead space next to the Latvian National Opera on the edge of Old Town.
The Solution
Theatre Square has been transformed into a peaceful and green meeting spot where residents and visitors of the city can enjoy a peaceful moment in the middle of the city.
Making an impact
In 2021, the parking lot became a pop-up green space for the summer, which proved to be a massive improvement to the city centre. To transform the square quickly and at lower costs, the Municipality chose to deploy mobile benches and potted plants.
In summer 2022, the square became a fixed green space in the city, and more benches and potted plants were added. With residents seeing the transformation as a positive change, the square is set to be rebuilt into a fixed green public space, no longer functioning as an illegal parking lot.
Lessons learnt
The initiative proved how the city can reclaim public space from cars with cost-effective and relatively quick solutions. It also shows that, in order to make change, large solutions are not always as efficient as small, incremental changes. These may give citizens the real experience of improved quality of life, eventually leading to demands for the changes to become permanent or to spread to more places across the city.
In this case, the citizens’ right to use Theatre Square as a place for public life has been successfully reinstated.