Buses, bicycles, even microparks are competing for the curbsides of Seattle, where the city is outgrowing 20th-century traditions of on-street parking.

In 2011, Mr. Gemignani had bamboo flooring, tables, brightly colored cafe chairs and dwarf fig and olive trees installed on a platform that extends from the curb over the pavement. In this way, the parking spots are transformed into a micro park, or parklet. Since then, the Slice House’s business has quadrupled, he says.

While drivers in many urban areas know Parkmobile as the system that lets them use their smart phones to pay for street parking, people in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Community Benefit District (YBCBD) are enjoying another type of Parkmobile: a truly moveable micropark.

NoPark returns “no parking zones” — mostly those associated fire hydrant placement — to low growth mosses, and grasses. These micro green spaces use foliage to stabilize the soil and to provide a durable low maintenance surface cover in addition to other benefits. These microparks can continue to provide emergency parking space for fire trucks and exasperated Fresh-direct delivery persons. But the other 99.9% of the time they now do something more.