THE SUNSET INDEX transforms curb availability into a city-scale financial instrument. Using real-time LADOT data, it reframes urban scarcity as market behavior, exposing how public space begins to act like an asset the moment it becomes scarce. This is both operational software and a civic-financial artwork built to reveal the system it inhabits.
The Sunset Index is a speculative financial instrument for urban public space: a live market that treats street parking as a tradable commodity.
Drawing from real-time LADOT curb occupancy data, the project applies the analytical frameworks of financial markets to the everyday friction of finding parking in Los Angeles. It generates price quotes, tracks volatility, and simulates futures contracts for parking availability across the city's major corridors.
The work functions simultaneously as operational software (a working app that residents can use to navigate street parking) and as a civic-financial artwork that exposes a broader pattern: the moment public space becomes scarce, it begins to behave like an asset. THE SUNSET INDEX makes this transformation visible, measurable, and tradable.
By subjecting the curb to the same instruments used for oil, wheat, and currency, the project reveals how cities already price scarcity through enforcement, meters, and time limits. It asks: what happens when we make that pricing explicit? What does it mean to financialize inconvenience, to trade civic friction, to measure what we can't seem to manage?
Real-time LADOT curb occupancy feeds, street sweeping schedules, parking meter status, and enforcement patterns across Los Angeles.
Native iOS application, real-time market data engine, city-scale software installation, civic-financial artwork.
Urban scarcity, financialization of public space, civic data legibility, speculative design, market as social interface.
The Sunset Index takes the daily scarcity of Los Angeles street parking and subjects it to the same analytical frameworks used for commodities and equities. In doing so, it reveals a broader truth about modern cities: once public space becomes scarce, it is treated — socially, economically, and emotionally — as a private asset.
The Index is both simulation and critique. It mirrors our instinct to rationalize inconvenience, to naturalize scarcity, and to manage what we struggle to govern. The question is not whether these systems exist, but why we've accepted them as normal.
These measures exist not to demonstrate efficiency, but to reveal scale.
Real-time aggregate value tracking curb availability across Los Angeles neighborhoods.
Granular insights and historical patterns for individual street segments.
Notifications for street sweeping schedules and enforcement patterns.
Experimental futures contracts simulating parking availability markets.
The Sunset Index is available as a working iOS application. Explore the futures market for Los Angeles street parking.
View the AppA speculative financial artwork and functional software installation. For informational and artistic purposes.