Rochdale Council’s Parking Bay Tweet Attracts International Ridicule

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” lamented Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell in 1970. The hit song mustn’t be on the Spotify playlist of anybody in the social media team at Rochdale Borough Council. Yesterday, they tweeted proudly about paving over a grass verge destroyed by sidewalk-parking motorists to benefit the sidewalk-parking motorists.

The tweet swiftly attracted ridicule from urbanists, many of whom pointed out that the Lancashire town declared a climate emergency three years ago.

“We’ve converted redundant grass verges … into new parking bays,” stated the original tweet, claiming that the council was “improving the environment by creating cleaner and safer spaces.”

The tweet—now deleted—included a GIF featuring “before” and “after” photographs showing how a grass verge damaged by illegal parking was paved over and made into official parking bays.

When Twitter users mocked the tweet and its celebratory GIF, the council’s social media team responded that the grass verge trashed by motorists was “no longer useful … because they were being damaged by car parking.”

One of those criticizing the council’s stance was Jon Burke, the climate change and decarbonization lead at Gloucester City Council. He suggested that “removing green space that reduces the impact of extreme heat events and replacing it with hard-standing car storage that exacerbates heatwaves and increases transport emissions and air pollution” might not be such a brilliant move.

“You have got to be f*cking joking with me,” he stressed.

In July 2019, Rochdale Borough Council declared a climate emergency saying that “we believe climate change will impact the lives of everybody who lives and works in the borough of Rochdale unless we take action.”

The council recognized that “climate change means … more frequent and intense storms increasing flooding events.”

Many on Twitter pointed out that paving over grass is likely to worsen the risk of flooding. Before the council deleted its cloth-eared tweet, it had attracted global attention.

“I would have put a curb around this space and filled it with a couple of trees and native plant species that attract birds and butterflies,” tweeted John J. Bauters, the Mayor of Emeryville in California, ribbing the English council for its “pro-parking concrete city aesthetic.”

Agreeing, Melanie Piana, the Mayor of the Michigan city of Ferndale, tweeted that the verge “could have been upgraded with native plants/natural landscaping to help with stormwater runoff.”

Piana has a master’s in urban planning and is a Climate Change Professional accredited by the Association of Climate Change Officers.

Rochdale Borough Council has been approached for this piece.