Cambridge Parking Tickets Get Yogic Redesign

Getting a parking ticket usually just stresses you out. But maybe it doesn't have to. Maybe it's even an opportunity for some existential reflection.

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That's the idea behind a redesign of city parking tickets in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This fall, the city printed 40,000 tickets that feature "citation salutations"—illustrations of calming yoga poses for the driver and the parking enforcement officer to do together. The redesign is a project of the Rhode Island School of Design professor and Cambridge artist-in-residence Daniel Peltz, who wanted to suggest "an alternative method of giving and receiving parking tickets."

Some residents aren't amused, and while we don't have numbers, it's unlikely many people are actually stopping to practice the poses. But presumably, a few people are reminded, as Peltz says, that "I’m going to get the ticket either way, my only choice really is how I’m going to receive it." That's a lesson that can be applied beyond the frustrating world of municipal fines.

Image (cc) from Flickr user Danielle Walquist