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Opinion: Temporary Public Space Would Address Shortage
- Apr 9
- 6 min read
By Norak Prak
Junior Research Fellow
Future Forum's young research fellow, Norak Prak was published in Cambodianess on April 9th, 2026. Check out the original article HERE, and read it below!
In February 2025, Phnom Penh municipality initiated one of its biggest public space projects. It is not a newly constructed park or green space, but rather the temporary closure of roads in the riverside area, from 5pm to10 pm on Saturday and Sunday, extending riverside park onto the road and peripheral streets.
By mid-2025, this riverside project called Walk Street gathered thousands to the traffic-free riverside road for its food, games and myriad of other activities.
Arguably, Walk Street is one of the most successful temporary public spaces in Phnom Penh by far. Walk Street serves as an ideal example to showcase the solution for public space shortages, as it used existing resources, the road.
Phnom Penh needs more public spaces for local communities throughout the city. Dense neighbourhoods like Mean Chey district or Toul Tompung are among the districts that lack shared spaces that aren’t a mall or a private property, with the exception of pagodas, which aren't appealing to most citizens.
The riverside project signifies a shift from the current urban policy for the better. Since land scarcity presents a challenge for city authorities to create new public space, new classification on public space needs to be added into the urban policy so that the city can create more temporary public spaces similar to Walk Street.
What Does Temporary Public Space Look Like?
Temporary public spaces are very ambiguous by nature due to how unconventional these spaces can be. The spaces used can range from alleyways, roads or streets, and spaces under a bridge to abandoned land parcels – which are among the more conventional places.
The projects below showcase creative use of such space and some of their impact, marking the need to update our current urban policy in Cambodia.
Take a temporary public space renovated from a parking lot at Malcom X boulevard, in Texas in the US. Researchers at the police department found that the abandoned lots were the most likely sites of crime.
So the local community, with an NGO and the help BetterBlock foundation, transformed the lot into a temporary public space with basketball events, singing, and food stalls. By 2023, there was a 55 percent reduction in violent crimes, and a 22 percent reduction to arrests in the neighbourhood, as reported by BetterBlock.
In the case of Phnom Penh, there is the Odom Garden, which was a temporary public space initiated by Urban Living Solution, more commonly known as ULS, before the site was later built as a luxury high-rise tower. While on the more high-end side, the space provided cafes, public seating and greenery for citizens to linger.
Another event-based temporary public space is found in the alleyways inside Chen Dom Daek community. Once or twice a year, they organize events that offer cooking competitions for residents, stage performances, art exhibits, food festivals and other activities such as painting the walls. What more, is that they reinvigorate the nearby pagoda for visitors once again, not only offering benefits of a community space to the residents but also to those passing by.
With temporary public spaces often occupying underused lands or roads, it is difficult for local authorities to make decisions or approve without consulting with the higher level of administration. Thus, it is crucial to tackle this from a policy standpoint.
Limitation of ‘Big Parks’ and Existing Policy
Previous policy efforts have aimed to address the shortage of smaller public spaces through “Sub-decree 42 of Urbanization Law”. However, this law stipulated a huge amount of space for each type of park, making implementation unfeasible due to land scarcity.
According to article 46 of the sub-decree, there are eight categories of public spaces and green spaces. Three of those are large national parks, and one is the green space along major streets and boulevards. The remaining four classes of public spaces are the typical public spaces and parks adjusted for the city, commune and village scales and playgrounds.
The measurements of note in this classification are the size of the public space and its maximum proximity to another public space of the same classification. The use of maximum proximity instead of minimum ensures they are condensed and evenly distributed. The four public spaces of note are:
Playground: approx.size 2000 square meters, max. proximity 1km
Village scale park: approx.size 5000 square meters (about ⅓ of a shophouse block), max. proximity 2km.
Commune/sangkat scale park: approx. Size 50,000 square meters (a bit over three shophouse blocks), no proximity specification.
City scale park: size up to 100,000 square meters (almost seven shophouse blocks), no proximity specification.
Article 47 also notes that these sizes can be much smaller in practice, to make it more implementable. However, the current standard-size recommendation and the lack of available land make it extremely difficult for the local authorities to create new public spaces to the point where this guiding policy becomes irrelevant. So, changes should be made to match the current practice and resources.
Alternative Policy
Ideally, the authorities will one day have to acquire empty lands and make them into public spaces. But to answer the immediate need, we need to change the existing policies to accommodate new forms of public spaces.
Whether we redefine public school grounds as public spaces, use alleyways for community events, or shut off traffic to create larger public space, we need to first make two changes to the policy. Additionally, adjustments to the district planning should be made for the local level to better decide if the temporary public space fits their location.
The first change is to make “temporary public space” a new classification for public space. This would enable communities to use under-utilized spaces, whether it is school grounds in the off-hours or low-traffic alleyways.
It also lets local authorities make approval without the need to consult or submit to upper bureaucratic-levels. Classifying such space can be initiated as a decision made by the authorities, or community submission.
That means the local authorities can formally announce a new temporary public space with its use time and location. This policy also gives the community the rights to request permission to designate streets, public school grounds and unused land to be used as public space to do whatever kinds of activities within tolerable reasons.
The second change to article 46 would convert the recommended size of public spaces to reflect the sum of all public spaces in the village and sangkat. A simpler explanation is that instead of one 5000 square meter park for the village to use, the village should aim to have all of its smaller parks equal to 5000 square meter combined. When factoring, temporary public spaces into this calculation, only those that are regularly reoccurring, similar to the Walk Street should be counted.
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Finally, the district land use plan should also include a traffic plan that specifies road priority so that community and local authority can adjust which roads can be shut-off or where it cannot be done due to high-traffic or road reserved for emergency access. Physical copies of the district land use plan should be easily requested at the local level to assist decision making and community initiatives.
These three changes not only allow the creation of new public spaces when public lands are scarce but also support that public spaces are distributed among the neighborhood across Phnom Penh.
Conclusion
By allowing temporary public space to be legalized at the policy-level, communities and local authorities can solve the immediate problem of public space shortage. But this also needs to be integrated into the development of district land use plans.
The district plan should also include a traffic plan and road priority plan to designate which roads have the lowest traffic priority, so they can be pedestrianized as a temporary public space on the weekend or during Khmer New Year.
While public spaces are always needed, temporary public space as a policy allows immediate remedies to this issue by using the existing resources belonging to the public or generous private land holders, including public schools, streets, and unused space below bridges — which in Stung Meanchey has seen a small community park built by the city authority. In the face of public space and resource shortage, Cambodians have always been known to compromise and innovate.
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