Parking minimums prevent developers from free-loading on a commons, that commons being street parking.
So eliminating parking minimums by themselves will create nasty side effects.
But of course the correct answer to tragedy of the commons is pricing -- price the street parking appropriately and it won't be abused so you won't need worse solutions like parking minimums.
Just a note - the parking minimums that are set themselves don’t necessarily correspond to the number of units built in the best way. So by artificially setting them you can windup with, as often seems the case, an oversupply of parking or in more rare cases an undersupply.
But in addition to pricing street parking more appropriately, and some cities are doing so, shifting the load on to the common spaces is kind of what you want to see as a transit user because if it continues to be set at a minimum you just wind up building more parking lots, highways, and cars. But if “the market” decides the market can actually signal to government entities that we do indeed need and want more options.
Like you actually want to see new apartments in urban cores built without parking garages. Theoretically (and perhaps in practice) these new developments should also be cheaper and less theoretically they give sidewalks and bus routes and tram routes more users and thus more funding and support. That then alleviates pressure on existing highways and everybody wins except the obnoxious highway lobby and the revolving door that it operates with existing state departments of highways.
Or just do what the Japanese do - remove unlimited (and overnight) on-street parking in urban areas and require anyone owning a car to prove they have a private parking spot to house it
Price parking appropriately and make people pay for it. If land is cheap, parking is cheap, so not a big deal. If land is expensive, then no freeloading on the streets, which can be put to better use anyways (sidewalks, bike lanes, outdoor cafes etc...)
> probably only be the best alternative on a densely packed island
So Manhattan or the San Francisco Peninsula?
I suspect the refusal to kowtow to car owners and the density are interrelated. Tokyo is more dense, in (small?) part, because there is far less space consumed by inanimate appliances.
Even if on street parking were metered consistently and priced appropriately that's too divorced from the developer & their incentives to solve this. Parking after the building is sold is the definition of not the developer's problem, which is part of the reason we have parking regulations to begin with.
A better solution might be to mandate parking minimums (to ensure the property is actually useful / not encroaching on the street) but not allowing "open air" spots to count to the minimum, meaning an open lot gets you nothing, a 2 level garage counts for half the spots, etc. Maybe tack on some credits for proximity to public transit while we're at it.
It is very much important to the developer - whoever buys the land wants to know that their employees and customers can get there. That means there needs to be enough parking, transit, or pedestrians. If it is in a car centrist area that won't buy if there isn't enough parking. Downtowns can get by with less parking only if there is great transit to bring people in. Developers are not stupid, they know that if there isn't enough parking property values go down.
This is the root of the issue, which people often want to ignore - it's a class chicken'd egg problem.
The "there is no parking at all" wonderlands can exist (even NOT counting artificial ones like Disneyland) - and the "everything is acres of parking and there's no street parking at all" also.
The question is how you get from one extreme to another - in a way that does NOT require you to redevelop the entire city Simcity style, nor puts onerous costs such that all development is stifled.
Part of it might be that if the parking lots/garages are not heavily used, or not used much, they'll "redevelop themselves" - but that likely requires making transit and other options better which is difficult, expensive, and often politically unsound.
> Parking minimums prevent developers from free-loading on a commons, that commons being street parking.
Another way of looking at it: parking minimums require developers to encroach upon a commons, that commons being land that could otherwise be used for more productive things than free parking.
Of course it is — unproductive land use creates negative externalities that affect the entire surrounding community. It's like saying "a factory dumping waste into a river doesn't pollute the commons if the river runs through their property".
The article explains this well:
> The office, filled with workers and transactions, generates far more in economic activity and value creation than its land value and, therefore, rises the highest. The apartment, where dozens of residents live, stands nearly as high. The rowhomes add steady, smaller value. But the parking lot does something different. It dips below the surface, shown as a red bar sinking into the ground.
> Why below ground? Because in economic terms, a parking lot doesn’t simply fail to add value; it actively subtracts value. Every year it sits idle, it consumes some of the most valuable land in the city.
> When valuable downtown land lies idle, it blocks the housing, jobs, and amenities that could exist there. The costs ripple outward: higher rents, longer commutes, fewer opportunities nearby. What could have been a productive part of the community instead becomes a hole in its fabric.
The LVT focus on profit above all else is why it is an unsatisfactory solution.
If the most important goal for every plot of land is to maximize its economic activity & tax revenue, that's going to be a miserable place to live.
All of the space uses that make a town nice to live in, are also underutilizing the land if the sole goal is to maximize economic activity.
Open space with native vegetation, parks, playgrounds, sports fields of all kinds like soccer fields, community pools, hiking trails.. all of that is wasted land if viewed through the lens of LVT maximization. All that space should be crammed full of high rise offices and apartments.
> Open space with native vegetation, parks, playgrounds, sports fields of all kinds like soccer fields, community pools, hiking trails.. all of that is wasted land if viewed through the lens of LVT maximization.
No, because all of that would be open to the community. The waste is only if it was locked up for use by certain people.
The river dumping analogy is so bad it's laughable. Obviously you don't own the entire river when the river merely runs through your property nor do you own the ocean or the watershed, and property values surrounding yours go down by a measurable amount when you dump things in the river. What negative externalities does a parking lot create that an empty lot does not? Minimal noise from people pulling in and out? Extra walking time between lots that are built up? Some pollution from the cars? These are normal externalities from literally any building that might be there as well. You can see how this is a different class than a polluted river, and is literally immeasurable.
With regards to the argument presented in the article, it's arguable that parking lots create value by making places accessible to more people. As such, a parking lot raises the property values and economic output of neighboring properties. I didn't see anything about that covered in the article, nor did I see any actual data. This is why chambers of commerce and the like support parking mandates, because they actually have positive externalities, not negative ones.
> With regards to the argument presented in the article, it's arguable that parking lots create value by making places accessible to more people.
I think it's arguable, but I think it's not the full picture. Let's look at downtown Columbus, Ohio where I live. With the parking lots that exist, there's less housing, which means that people move further away from where they work, creating traffic, creating highway construction costs, insurance, &c. I'm quite sure that creating a parking lot makes the location of my employer (well not mine literally) more valuable, but it does seem like it creates more costs. If those lots were, say, because it's a downtown location a 10-story building with 300 residents those people would be shopping downtown, going to restaurants and bars downtown, spending more time there, &c.
There are cases where a parking lot does create economic value, though I think those are more nuanced and limited. I'm not sure your point nor the one you were responding to, nor mine for that matter, are able to really calculate the economic costs of surface parking lots without taking into account factors like, well where the hell is the thing?
> As such, a parking lot raises the property values and economic output of neighboring properties.
Cherry-picking this comment. I'd add to what I wrote above, but I'd also add that I'm not sure that there is evidence to support this statement and if you take this to its quasi-logical extreme you wind up with your entire neighborhood just being one gigantic skyscraper with a Costco and doctors office inside surrounded by parking lots or something. And then the increased profit flows to Costco's shareholders which is fine, but for your local economy that's kind of bad versus having a variety of stores that can open and close. It's putting your eggs in one basket, so to speak.
Everything about city planning should generally be done in moderation. Including enough parking and enough residential space, but not too much or too little. A city consisting only of residential apartment blocks but no parking, transit, or stores will be a pretty terrible city as well.
I assume that Syracuse or other similar tier-2-to-3 cities would be far worse off if you replaced all the parking with apartment buildings.
Yea I think that's fair. I personally advocate for mixed-use medium level density over skyscrapers or the suburbs which are both not ideal either. Something more like European towns and villages but since it's America we can have a little bit larger homes. I live in that style of neighborhood today, and have a 2.5 story house and detached garage and back yard. Though it's not quite as dense as it should be, but zoning rules have recently changed to allow the main streets on the east and west side to build better density which will be great for everyone here. We can't have a grocery store really because the density isn't there. Tons of good restaurants and coffee shops and such.
I've never been to Syracuse but with the university there and number of employees you may be right, but it really depends I think on the layout. In the US once you get away from college towns or smaller towns like you're describing and get into medium-sized American cities we really lack density and transportation and we pay out the ass for the poor planning and past destruction that took place. It's changing though.
>Of course it is — unproductive land use creates negative externalities that affect the entire surrounding community. It's like saying "a factory dumping waste into a river doesn't pollute the commons if the river runs through their property".
Pretty damn rich to say such a thing when exactly this sort of hand wringing that brought this whole crap about.
"oh no, think about how the commons will be polluted if we don't compel people to build parking space". -some karen in 1970, probably
The right thing go do is back off the regulation. Let land owners do what they please. If that's a parking space (it almost certainly won't be) so be it.
Underutilized surface area of the Earth contributes to more resource, energy, and time consumption for everyone else in society to move around it.
When ranking consumption such as large cars, flights, plastic toys, etc, space on the surface of the Earth, within an urban/suburban metro, is at the very top in terms of impact on others.
If a developer builds in a way such that the demand for street parking outstrips supply, the street parking still has a cost, that cost is just expressed in time to find a spot, not dollars like you're suggesting. People unwilling to pay that time cost will find paid lots or not have a car (which is basically the dynamic in my building: people either pay $450 a month for a spot or they spend 10-15 minutes looking for a free street spot).
In practice, of course, existing residents feel entitled to "their" street parking and get mad when a new building with new people contending for those spots is built but there's no logical reason to preference residents who have previously lived there. This is where politics rears its head though.
I completely agree with your comment, but would also like to add that many cities have restricted or stopped permitting the construction of above-surface parkades, further distorting the market.
This is correct which will incentivize the constructions of private lots etc (assuming the people you mentioned value their time more than the $ those lots cost). I don't see any reason you can't trust markets to address the supply of a commodity product.
Exactly, it's not like a Target going up in an area with no parking minimums is going to be like "great our massive big box store won't need any parking!" They're just going to be incentivized to build enough parking to fill their store to levels they expect based on the massive amount of data they have, and not just some gut-feeling BS from the 60s in the parking minimums regulations "department store - 20 spots per 100sqft" or some bullshit.
Get rid of street parking so drivers can't free load on the commons either, make parking something that you have to buy (with your rent or on your own) because it actually costs something.
Also, you no longer have to worry about kids appearing into the street between parked cars that obscure their presence even near crosswalks (that cars park way too close to because they can't find parking elsewhere). Win-win.
You also don't want the streets you bike on to be clogged up with cars parking legally, parking illegally and circling the block continuously looking for parking.
Right, which is why the actual solution is mixed use development and a robust public transit system.
Ultimately this is a geometry problem. Cars are by far the least space-efficient method of transporting people; eventually your roads just can't accommodate any more traffic. If there's enough demand to visit a given area then anything that doesn't minimize cars will just make things worse.
> Cars are by far the least space-efficient method of transporting people
Not true in practice even if true in theory; in many places the average full-size bus contains fewer people than would fit in a minivan.
The problem is you need 5-10 years of reliable public transit in an area before non-transit users begin to convert (or transit users begin to move in).
If you myopically look at the instantaneous usage of infrastructure then you could argue that most roads are pointless because they are, on average, empty.
The bus might have less than 5 people on it at any given moment you observe, but over its >2 hour route it transports dozens or hundreds of people between stops.
Depends on the trip. I've timed many trips bike vs. car in my city. Bike is usually faster (or very similar time) because the average speed through a city is actually pretty slow. There's a lot of "hurry up and wait" with cars (rush to get to the next red light) and on my bike I'm frequently passing long lines of cars stopped at lights.
And parking is a time sink. There's a place in my city that has huge parking garages with lots of parking but you still have to drive through a few levels of the garage, park, and then walk back down a few flights of stairs, then walk to your destination. I just park my bike right outside of my destination with the wheel lock. Street parking is always awful in populated cities, and I never have to worry about it. I always park right at my destination, where ever it is.
In suburbia, cars are faster because the average distance per trip is a lot longer. But it's ironic that the reason why the average distance is longer is BECAUSE it was built for cars so everything gets spread out! Cars are a solution to a problem that they created.
Not the case as density increases: once roads reach their capacity, space inefficiency quickly becomes time inefficiency. That's why some cities have started introducing congestion pricing.
Not in my city. Business is all dying, everyone avoids to go to the centre, everywhere the city fights cars, handy man charge extra just for comings, nah, it's basically gated communities now, well, they can have it, but life happens somewhere else then, where it can expand freely.
Mixed-use developments, walkable neighborhoods. When you make it easy to walk or bike to any place people need to go, parking is not necessary. Plenty of cities do it just fine, just not in the US.
Then invest in public transit (trains, mainly) for whatever isn't within walking distance.
Maybe surface parking lots aren't the answer, but I do know that if there are places that I can't easily park at, I just don't go there unless absolutely necessary.
Nice to think, "the people will take trains!" but sometimes it doesn't work that way.
Sure, removing parking essentially requires the neighborhood to become more self-sustaining. This works in really dense cities like New York and San Francisco but it requires enough desirability to fill the housing with people who have enough disposable income to replace the far bigger "catchment area" that the parking used to serve.
Which in turn affects the kind of economies that the new development can support. A car dealership? Needs parking and a large catchment area. Burrito shop? Probably not getting much destination traffic and can support itself on locals.
Those people may not be enough to support them. Cars take up space, but houses take up even more space. It is really easy for a Downtown to go into a downward spiral if you take away the ability of people to get there.
It need not happen, but all too often simple answers are wrong.
> It is really easy for a Downtown to go into a downward spiral if you take away the ability of people to get there.
I've seen this sad downward spiral multiple times, it is not a good outcome.
I used to live not too far from a town with a mellow but nice downtown center. Not a huge draw but many small nice restaurants and shops and there was steady business. Sensing a profit machine, the city filled all streets with parking meters. Turns out that while it was a nice area, it wasn't so irreplaceable, so nobody goes anymore. Business collapsed. I drove by last summer and everything is closed, the parking meters sit empty.
Same is happening now to the downtown one town over. It used to very vibrant awesome downtown, although small. Bars, restaurants, music venues, fun shops. I was there every night for something or other. Loved it. Easy free parking around. Some of the parking lots have office buildings now and the city lots have become very expensive. Much less activity there now, about a third of the venues are closed and the remaining ones are saying they can't last very long with fewer people going. While in its heyday this downtown was far more active than my first example, turns out it wasn't irreplaceable either. People just don't go anymore.
Point is that this tactic works only when the downtown is so established and so dense that people are going to go anyway even if parking is hard, like Manhattan.
> Point is that this tactic works only when the downtown is so established and so dense that people are going to go anyway even if parking is hard, like Manhattan.
Or the facilitating of cars has now made it more unattractive for people to go and hangout there even if it is easier to drive to.
> ome of the parking lots have office buildings now and the city lots have become very expensive. Much less activity there now, about a third of the venues are closed and the remaining ones are saying they can't last very long with fewer people going.
Sounds to me like that found a valueable use for their land and got rid of the low value things you really enjoyed...
Of course to you this is bad, and the city lost the night life, but that might or might not be worse overall. They seem to be a denser area despite it, for whatever that means.
Good point. And 'yard', if any. You can even see this at large events that are in urban centers.
Churchill Downs for example is surrounded by residential properties. At Derby time a lot of those enterprising people would let you park in their yard for $5 or $10 (maybe more now, it's been many years). These are not large properties - typical older shotgun houses. I seem to remember them getting 10 or more cars and that's not even counting the space the house itself is taking up.
Has there ever been a situation where taking away parking has lead to traffic dropping?
I've heard this, but I've never seen an example in practice. It seems like making things more walkable and bikeable, at the expense of cars, always increases foot-traffic, with no exception.
Yes, though I can't recall enough details that I could help you search.
Basically anytime it is tried in the suburbs where nobody is walking now nothing changes. When a lot of people are already walking you can increase traffic by getting rid of cars.
Details matter, most of the places people take aware cars are already dense areas and they tell you about it. However in a few cases someone who hasn't understood the context tried to apply a lesson it doesn't apply and it fails.
Sure, but this is why it makes sense to do it gradually. Things get built slowly and if the new buildings are taller they may actually take up less space (per person) than a car does, when considering ingress, egress, the road itself, etc.
Cambridge MA was rezoned in the mid-20th century to suburban standards, in a city where land in a mid-range neighborhood now costs $350-$400 per square foot. Besides putting in floor area ratio requirements that required most of the existing housing to be grandfathered, they added a requirement of one parking spot per unit.
If it's a traditional 1-car driveway that's about $70K worth of land, although in the end it's zero-sum because it takes away an on-street spot. Parking garages for larger developments probably cost as much or more per parking space - they use less land, but they're expensive to build.
It's insane, and they're trying to fix it, and approving special permits left and right to omit the spots.
So basically they basically took everyone's property rights for 50yr and now then give them back at the government's pleasure.
Now, I know nobody not rich enough to play the game owns land in Cambridge, but even the something tells me the guy who had a Trump 2024 sign on his garage, the guy who owns a business that's at odds with the city, something tells me their permits require the most $1-10k engineering expenses, lawyers fees, etc, etc, to get approved.
This article goes too far and yet not far enough. By trying to build more buildings that increase parking in yet smaller footprints and then charge for the added expense of all of that, why not just eliminate cars in these districts altogether. Park outside of the city, walk/bike/scooter/mass-transit within the city. Now you aren't trying to extract value from the simple act of wanting to exist in a space leaving more value to core economic goods and services.
In a large metro with an extant, functional, mass transit system, sure. But do this in a cold place with no existing mass transit, and all you'll do is kill off downtown businesses and reduce property values to 0.
This experiment was kind of done in Buffalo in the 70s. They blocked off large swathes of downtown to build the above ground section of metro rail. This encouraged business to close downtown locations and move to suburban malls. That kind of retail never came back to downtown in the roughly 1 decade after completion of the metro. So you had a mass transit system that went effectively from nowhere to nowhere, and managed to kill the downtown retail corridor.
I think someone should try banning absolutely everything but emergency vehicles. No cars, no taxis, no vans, no trucks. Only cargo bikes, hand carts and maybe palanquins. Add some sort of uber type platform where you can hire someone to push wheelchair around. Limit speeds of mopeds and bicycles to say 10 or 15 km/h for pedestrian safety. This should make extremely liveable city if those promoting these things are right.
There’d be a revolt. You might be able to get away with doing this in some small area, maybe a city block or two. But anything more than that is just begging for a backlash from the local population.
My city, Utrecht, in the Netherlands is quite close this. No cars in the city center, no diesel vans for delivery, only busses and taxis can drive in certain roads in the center, bikes have priority on most roads cars can drive outside the center, mow they are reducing the speed limit to 30km/h everywhere in the city (following Amsterdam on this), and they are building a new car-free neighborhood for 40k people with no parking spaces and car roads.
Good first steps. Next is to get rid of those busses and taxis too. And truly open all roads to be freely used by pedestrians. Or even densification. You could fit buildings there for more people to live in. Then gradually expand this area so you have some reasonable like 40 km super block with no vehicles.
I mean that's "Park and Ride" which already exists but the problem is that people, kinda rightfully, hate it. All the downsides of a car with all the downsides of a bus.
The solution, which has done in my city to genuinely smashing success is to nationalize the parking garages meaning government builds them, maintains them, and they're free forever. Dot them around a dense mixed use area and quite literally watch the money pour in. Everything is within grandpa walking distance of at least one garage, they're specced to over capacity so each one is never full, and it provides parking to the workers and apartments.
That sounds like a recipe for getting a ton of cars into your city. Think of parking garages as "traffic generators". If you cater to cars you shouldn't be surprised if what you get is more cars. It's literally sending the signal to people that it's fine (and encouraged) to drive cars everywhere. After all, your tax dollars are paying for all that infrastructure
Maybe some people are fully car-pilled, but many people want to live in an area that isn't so car-dependent, it tends to make everything more spread out, noisy, polluted, and congested. It also imposes very large personal costs.
I mean yeah… getting cars into your city is like the whole point. Cars are filled with people and people work and spend money. Specifically outside money. This is a city that has no subway or rail, vehicles are the only means of moving people. If you rip out the parking you won't get a vibrant walkable downtown, people won't start taking the bus, demand rail or move downtown because "the downtown area" just isn't that valuable of a destination. You will get a dead downtown. In a sad twist of fate when your "business district" doesn't have the capacity to absorb workers commuting or people going out on nights and weekends you'll see commercial buildings spread out even more to areas that can. Little pockets of nightlife and office space crop up next to newly built 5 over 1 apartments with plenty of parking built adjacent to major suburbs.
> Cars are filled with people and people work and spend money.
You're conflating people with cars. You want people and you're assuming that all those people must be attached to a car. There are other ways to get people to be populate an area which brings me to my second point...
> If you rip out the parking you won't get a vibrant walkable downtown
You will if you build a lot more housing in that area. If thousands more people are able to live right there then of course it'll become more vibrant. That parking garage could be home to hundreds of people. Instead it's temporary storage for cars. The problem is that suburbanites are going to fight tooth-and-nail to bring their cars. So what you get is cars.
If that's what you want, so be it. That doesn't sound like a vibrant place if everybody has to drive a car to get there, though. It's traffic by design.
> because "the downtown area" just isn't that valuable of a destination
This is another point people miss - 50 maybe 75 years ago the downtown area was a valuable destination because stores were smaller and what you needed could only be found at one or two places in a city; often downtown.
Cities are much bigger, but so are stores - you can go for months shopping nowhere but a SuperTarget or Walmart; and half the remainder can be delivered.
You make downtown desirable and then begin fixing the traffic problems. It takes 20+ years, but it can be done.
> that's "Park and Ride" which already exists but the problem is that people, kinda rightfully, hate it
... do people hate park and rides? Where I'm from (suburbs outside a US city) it's completely standard to park outside the city (in a garage or big lot at a train station) and take the train in. I find it quite comfortable personally.
It sounds like yours is specifically for buses, but I think it's that people generally don't like buses, they're slow and uncomfortable. The park and ride is fine when you can walk from it to a subway/train.
Parking at a train station or even a subway entrance sounds like heaven compared to ours which is a surface lot with a bus stop. But I'm not sure if "just have a subway or train network" is going to work for cities like Syracuse that don't already have them.
It is not convenient. It's freezing cold and icy, no walk, no bike, no scooter. Use mass-transit, sure, when you don't care about your life, when it's working, when it's coming regularly, when i don't have to exchange stations, but still, walking from home to a station and back, nah, it all sucks.
Imagining sitting in a cosy, warm pod, driving in a tunnel autonomously, point to point, and you have my vote.
That giant 5-level parking lot monstrocity could be a transport hub instead that has a warm metro stop, much better lighting and safety and perhaps even some light convenience retail.
> Imagining sitting in a cosy, warm pod, driving in a tunnel autonomously, point to point, and you have my vote.
An unfortunate side effect of car dependence is people forgetting how to dress outside in the place they live, a skill humans had for thousands of years but apparently lost some time in the last ~100.
> Park outside of the city, walk/bike/scooter/mass-transit within
Very telling how these arguments are always the most ableist shit you've ever heard and yet people seem to think they're Very Progressive for making them.
Cars are great for people who do have all their limbs but lack the stamina to walk long distances, stand for long periods of time, carry large weights, etc.
Enabling and incentivizing able-bodied people to do things other than drive reduces traffic and parking pressure, expanding access for the people who are unable to function without cars (and long-term will, contrary to your concerns, reduce the portion of people whose physical condition prevents them from functioning without a car).
Sorry the poster didn't put a specific, individualized carve out for all of the disabled groups of people who would obviously be allowed to use whatever method in whatever imagined, hypothetical future, and not kicked to the curb like trash.
It is generally more productive to assume charity in the people you are talking to, that of course no one is going to ignore that some people need cars to get around.
If they don't want to be replied to like they believe in absolutes then they should not speak in absolutes. I'm so tired of having to “““assume””” that people would be inclusive of me and my needs when they outright say the opposite. Do better.
I lived in Vancouver for years, near the downtown, near the SkyTrain and it was amazing. Back then I thought I would never live anywhere but the downtown of a city.
But, you know what, life changes. I know there’s hardcore folks out there who will cycle miles with their kids, or take them on transit, or even live with them in a 2 bedroom downtown apartment, but it is just too hard to live that way for many people. With a family, most people need more space, and they need to be able to get from their suburban home to some kind of shopping or work, in minimum time so that they can both take care of kids, maintain a career, and have a glimpse of a life for themselves.
We don’t need to have surface lots right in the middle of every downtown, but there needs to be somewhere for people to park.
Some European cities have car-free city centers. I live in one, which serves as the shopping center of roughly 1 million people living in the suburbs. If you want to shop in the city you need to park in one of the big underground parking lots and pay sth like more than 10 Euros/hour. Alternatively you can park just outside the city at a park & ride spot for 10 Euros/day and take the public transport included in the parking price.
It's inconvenient for people, yes. It was inconvenient to drive and park in the narrow streets of a medieval city too. This is unfortunately not easy to implement in North America, as the cities are relatively new. What we have feels very privileged.
I don't really buy this argument. I live a happily (nearly) car-free life with 3 kids. It's not hard, it really isn't. I bike them everywhere, we take transit. I even do our weekly grocery shopping by bike. I bike them to school year round (yes, even today when it was 10F this morning). I wouldn't consider myself "hardcore" at all. I'm just your average middle-aged dad.
I use our car approximately once per week. In 2024 I used my car a total of 32 times (I actually tallied it out for the whole year)
It's really just a matter of city design. Do you think there aren't families in Copenhagen who need to get to their job and shops? They manage with much lower car mileage than the average American. American suburbs are car-centric and those cars end up clogging up urban cores where people are trying to live their lives.
Many Americans/Canadians probably cannot even imagine what my life is like. They can't even picture what it means to pick up a week's worth of groceries for a family of 5 on a bike (with a kid!). It just doesn't even register that this is a possibility.
> American suburbs are car-centric and those cars end up clogging up urban cores where people are trying to live their lives.
I wonder how much of that is the case - anymore. I am suburb or even exurb, but I don't go "to the urban core" unless basically forced to; these days that's specialized medical only.
And surprisingly numbers of what people call "suburbs" are decently walkable, if you're willing to compromise on where you walk to - e.g., you might not have 20 restaurants in short walking distance, perhaps only 5.
(I've literally walked young kids - including a baby! - to school when it's -40°. A big big part of the change is to slowly move people to fewer car trips - not try to get them to reduce the number of cars. That comes later once they realize they only used it 32 times!)
Heck, I'm happy just parking close enough to walk to a downtown area, so parking doesn't necessarily have to be in the middle for me to use it, but there's no way I'm taking public transport to get close enough.
Just sounds absolutely miserable to prioritize that way of living that is so car dependent. So many negatives come from it:
- pollution
- traffic deaths
- heat generation from all the infra
- inefficient use of space
- ugly aesthetic of strip malls and parking lots
It doesn't have to be this way. We can do better to build diverse housing in our cities, leverage space at the ground level for businesses, invest in our transit to make it safer and more convenient.
Instead we just go with what's easy and continue to build roads and sprawl.
Nary a mention of parking garages / underground parking?
Austrian cities have way more parking than one would expect, but it's nearly all underground and costs €
The benefits are huge, you have have dense commerical areas where you drive in, park underground, pay for some hours, then walk between the shops to do all your business.
Switch from a culture of car use to walking, biking and public transport (buses, trams, light rail). And if people outside the city are coming in by car - let them park outside the town center and continue with public transport from there (while public transport is developed further afield; after that they would only drive their cars as far as the nearest train station, or even bike there).
TL;DW: The difference in tax revenue between a surface parking lot and a business with subterranean parking is so vast, that cities can justify using value to underwrite the loans necessary for developers to do the work. (Called "Tax Increment Financing") This model is proving extremely successful with cities that try taking it on.
"That is, how much value a parcel creates for the community compared to how much value it consumes simply by existing as land. Think of it like this:
Net Contribution=(Economic Output in $)−(Land Value in $)"
This calculation is shady. Land value fluctuates and already "bakes in" the predicted economic output... but multiplied across decades. Not to mention, land doesn't consume value by existing. the value never goes anywhere. Its opportunity cost, not a decrease in actual value.
Yes, there is value "missed out on", but it hasn't been destroyed. Because it never existed. And that value wouldn't have appeared out of nowhere. it would've required using up other resources that the parking lot wasn't.
I was also unconvinced by that hand-wavy analysis. Basically, "parking is negative value because I don't like it, look at this graph I made up."
In the US most places that aren't already highly urbanized are based on car culture. The culture isn't going to magically shift to transit if you take away parking, people will just complain and go elsewhere.
The article also completely abandons this angle later when it acknowledges that parking can be financially acceptable for the land owners. It also acknowledges that municipally mandated parking isn't the issue either.
How many parcels in e.g. downtown Syracuse are just vacant? That represents a much lower value than surface parking.
I definitely agree that parking in garages and integrated into buildings is much better but if you're unsatisfied with your downtown area I don't think targeting parking lots is the place to start. The real question is why don't people believe they can get more value out of it with further development? It's a little chicken-and-egg but you have to make the downtown a desirable place for those investments.
If you don't like parking you need to start with cars: give people a reasonable alternative. Too many are looking at this from a standpoint of "lets just get rid of parking" - without asking what people will do instead. All too often the answer is they will drive someplace in the suburbs instead where they get free parking.
If you want your downtowns to not have parking you need an alternative. In most cases that means you need to improve your transit in the entire city so people can get there.
It's a chicken and egg problem. If you retain the parking but build transit, people will keep doing what they've always done. Partly because people are resistant to change, partly because the areas you can take transit to are still mostly parking lots.
Places like Los Angeles are grappling with 30+ years of investing in transit with minimal changes in modeshare, because they continued investing in automobility at the same rate.
Many cities that have a dense core will have big municipal lots and garages to enable people to park somewhere they can walk from. Of course, the first thing urbanists go after is the presence of these lots in "high-value" real estate.
Solar panels is the answer. It keeps the people dry in the rain and the power can go right back to the city. Yes, it's not possible for all lots. For a vast majority of them, it's a net win.
Solar panels do not solve the problem of parking lots being community dead zones. You can put solar panels on anything - it'd be better if it were housing, a store, a pub, etc. than a parking lot.
I currently live in a downtown area, and "walkable city" policies like this is why I'm going to move to a big open suburb when my lease is up. It makes life much more of a hassle, especially in cold weather.
Parking maximums would be just as stupid as parking minimums. Instead of oversupply with inefficient use of space you'll get under supply with businesses starved of customers who can't find a convenient parking space.
Let the market decide how much parking is needed. It'll do a much better job than you ever could.
This is such a terrifying vision of the proper scope of government. We shouldn't use government to hurt people, and making someone's property too expensive to continue owning is definitely hurting them.
If you're really concerned with surface parking push the government to stop making it so expensive for companies to develop self-driving technology or to offer transportation services. If it's easier and less expensive for individuals to use transportation that they don't need to park anywhere the need for surface lots vanishes and those owning the property will look for something else to do with it.
> We shouldn't use government to hurt people, and making someone's property too expensive to continue owning is definitely hurting them.
But we are using government to hurt people — we are incentivizing (or worse, requiring) land owners to harm the surrounding community by not developing their property. A land value tax would simply shift some of the cost that is already burdening the rest of the community onto the unproductive property owners.
So, the thing here, is that the property you're worried about is the guy who owns a parking lot, and not the people who are being overcharged on their personal homes to subsidize mister-surface-parking.
Parking minimums prevent developers from free-loading on a commons, that commons being street parking.
So eliminating parking minimums by themselves will create nasty side effects.
But of course the correct answer to tragedy of the commons is pricing -- price the street parking appropriately and it won't be abused so you won't need worse solutions like parking minimums.
Just a note - the parking minimums that are set themselves don’t necessarily correspond to the number of units built in the best way. So by artificially setting them you can windup with, as often seems the case, an oversupply of parking or in more rare cases an undersupply.
But in addition to pricing street parking more appropriately, and some cities are doing so, shifting the load on to the common spaces is kind of what you want to see as a transit user because if it continues to be set at a minimum you just wind up building more parking lots, highways, and cars. But if “the market” decides the market can actually signal to government entities that we do indeed need and want more options.
Like you actually want to see new apartments in urban cores built without parking garages. Theoretically (and perhaps in practice) these new developments should also be cheaper and less theoretically they give sidewalks and bus routes and tram routes more users and thus more funding and support. That then alleviates pressure on existing highways and everybody wins except the obnoxious highway lobby and the revolving door that it operates with existing state departments of highways.
Or just do what the Japanese do - remove unlimited (and overnight) on-street parking in urban areas and require anyone owning a car to prove they have a private parking spot to house it
I think you're also forgetting the other aspect that allows this which is having readily available public transport.
That's pretty drastic, and would probably only be the best alternative on a densely packed island. Seems like overkill for any other situation.
Price parking appropriately and make people pay for it. If land is cheap, parking is cheap, so not a big deal. If land is expensive, then no freeloading on the streets, which can be put to better use anyways (sidewalks, bike lanes, outdoor cafes etc...)
What do you mean freeloading? Do you know how many taxes do you pay to have a vehicle, gas, etc?
You're leaving your property on public land. How much would that land rent for?
You perhaps pay tens of dollars per month. Is that enough to fully cover all externalized costs of owning that vehicle? No.
The government says yes. In fact, knowing the government, they probably get a huge surplus from my taxes. What makes you say no?
You should look up how your local government pays for the kinds of local roads you can park on.
If you live in the US, there's a very good chance that's coming from the property and sales tax everyone pays, not any tax on your vehicle.
> probably only be the best alternative on a densely packed island
So Manhattan or the San Francisco Peninsula?
I suspect the refusal to kowtow to car owners and the density are interrelated. Tokyo is more dense, in (small?) part, because there is far less space consumed by inanimate appliances.
Even if on street parking were metered consistently and priced appropriately that's too divorced from the developer & their incentives to solve this. Parking after the building is sold is the definition of not the developer's problem, which is part of the reason we have parking regulations to begin with.
A better solution might be to mandate parking minimums (to ensure the property is actually useful / not encroaching on the street) but not allowing "open air" spots to count to the minimum, meaning an open lot gets you nothing, a 2 level garage counts for half the spots, etc. Maybe tack on some credits for proximity to public transit while we're at it.
It is very much important to the developer - whoever buys the land wants to know that their employees and customers can get there. That means there needs to be enough parking, transit, or pedestrians. If it is in a car centrist area that won't buy if there isn't enough parking. Downtowns can get by with less parking only if there is great transit to bring people in. Developers are not stupid, they know that if there isn't enough parking property values go down.
This is the root of the issue, which people often want to ignore - it's a class chicken'd egg problem.
The "there is no parking at all" wonderlands can exist (even NOT counting artificial ones like Disneyland) - and the "everything is acres of parking and there's no street parking at all" also.
The question is how you get from one extreme to another - in a way that does NOT require you to redevelop the entire city Simcity style, nor puts onerous costs such that all development is stifled.
Part of it might be that if the parking lots/garages are not heavily used, or not used much, they'll "redevelop themselves" - but that likely requires making transit and other options better which is difficult, expensive, and often politically unsound.
Disneyland has one of the largest parking structures in the world.
> Parking minimums prevent developers from free-loading on a commons, that commons being street parking.
Another way of looking at it: parking minimums require developers to encroach upon a commons, that commons being land that could otherwise be used for more productive things than free parking.
It's not a commons if they buy the land.
Of course it is — unproductive land use creates negative externalities that affect the entire surrounding community. It's like saying "a factory dumping waste into a river doesn't pollute the commons if the river runs through their property".
The article explains this well:
> The office, filled with workers and transactions, generates far more in economic activity and value creation than its land value and, therefore, rises the highest. The apartment, where dozens of residents live, stands nearly as high. The rowhomes add steady, smaller value. But the parking lot does something different. It dips below the surface, shown as a red bar sinking into the ground.
> Why below ground? Because in economic terms, a parking lot doesn’t simply fail to add value; it actively subtracts value. Every year it sits idle, it consumes some of the most valuable land in the city.
> When valuable downtown land lies idle, it blocks the housing, jobs, and amenities that could exist there. The costs ripple outward: higher rents, longer commutes, fewer opportunities nearby. What could have been a productive part of the community instead becomes a hole in its fabric.
> generates far more in economic activity
The LVT focus on profit above all else is why it is an unsatisfactory solution.
If the most important goal for every plot of land is to maximize its economic activity & tax revenue, that's going to be a miserable place to live.
All of the space uses that make a town nice to live in, are also underutilizing the land if the sole goal is to maximize economic activity.
Open space with native vegetation, parks, playgrounds, sports fields of all kinds like soccer fields, community pools, hiking trails.. all of that is wasted land if viewed through the lens of LVT maximization. All that space should be crammed full of high rise offices and apartments.
> Open space with native vegetation, parks, playgrounds, sports fields of all kinds like soccer fields, community pools, hiking trails.. all of that is wasted land if viewed through the lens of LVT maximization.
No, because all of that would be open to the community. The waste is only if it was locked up for use by certain people.
The river dumping analogy is so bad it's laughable. Obviously you don't own the entire river when the river merely runs through your property nor do you own the ocean or the watershed, and property values surrounding yours go down by a measurable amount when you dump things in the river. What negative externalities does a parking lot create that an empty lot does not? Minimal noise from people pulling in and out? Extra walking time between lots that are built up? Some pollution from the cars? These are normal externalities from literally any building that might be there as well. You can see how this is a different class than a polluted river, and is literally immeasurable.
With regards to the argument presented in the article, it's arguable that parking lots create value by making places accessible to more people. As such, a parking lot raises the property values and economic output of neighboring properties. I didn't see anything about that covered in the article, nor did I see any actual data. This is why chambers of commerce and the like support parking mandates, because they actually have positive externalities, not negative ones.
> With regards to the argument presented in the article, it's arguable that parking lots create value by making places accessible to more people.
I think it's arguable, but I think it's not the full picture. Let's look at downtown Columbus, Ohio where I live. With the parking lots that exist, there's less housing, which means that people move further away from where they work, creating traffic, creating highway construction costs, insurance, &c. I'm quite sure that creating a parking lot makes the location of my employer (well not mine literally) more valuable, but it does seem like it creates more costs. If those lots were, say, because it's a downtown location a 10-story building with 300 residents those people would be shopping downtown, going to restaurants and bars downtown, spending more time there, &c.
There are cases where a parking lot does create economic value, though I think those are more nuanced and limited. I'm not sure your point nor the one you were responding to, nor mine for that matter, are able to really calculate the economic costs of surface parking lots without taking into account factors like, well where the hell is the thing?
> As such, a parking lot raises the property values and economic output of neighboring properties.
Cherry-picking this comment. I'd add to what I wrote above, but I'd also add that I'm not sure that there is evidence to support this statement and if you take this to its quasi-logical extreme you wind up with your entire neighborhood just being one gigantic skyscraper with a Costco and doctors office inside surrounded by parking lots or something. And then the increased profit flows to Costco's shareholders which is fine, but for your local economy that's kind of bad versus having a variety of stores that can open and close. It's putting your eggs in one basket, so to speak.
Everything about city planning should generally be done in moderation. Including enough parking and enough residential space, but not too much or too little. A city consisting only of residential apartment blocks but no parking, transit, or stores will be a pretty terrible city as well.
I assume that Syracuse or other similar tier-2-to-3 cities would be far worse off if you replaced all the parking with apartment buildings.
Yea I think that's fair. I personally advocate for mixed-use medium level density over skyscrapers or the suburbs which are both not ideal either. Something more like European towns and villages but since it's America we can have a little bit larger homes. I live in that style of neighborhood today, and have a 2.5 story house and detached garage and back yard. Though it's not quite as dense as it should be, but zoning rules have recently changed to allow the main streets on the east and west side to build better density which will be great for everyone here. We can't have a grocery store really because the density isn't there. Tons of good restaurants and coffee shops and such.
I've never been to Syracuse but with the university there and number of employees you may be right, but it really depends I think on the layout. In the US once you get away from college towns or smaller towns like you're describing and get into medium-sized American cities we really lack density and transportation and we pay out the ass for the poor planning and past destruction that took place. It's changing though.
>The river dumping analogy is so bad it's laughable.
The frame of mind that brings such comparisons about is anything but funny in a world where all our votes count the same.
>Of course it is — unproductive land use creates negative externalities that affect the entire surrounding community. It's like saying "a factory dumping waste into a river doesn't pollute the commons if the river runs through their property".
Pretty damn rich to say such a thing when exactly this sort of hand wringing that brought this whole crap about.
"oh no, think about how the commons will be polluted if we don't compel people to build parking space". -some karen in 1970, probably
The right thing go do is back off the regulation. Let land owners do what they please. If that's a parking space (it almost certainly won't be) so be it.
Underutilized surface area of the Earth contributes to more resource, energy, and time consumption for everyone else in society to move around it.
When ranking consumption such as large cars, flights, plastic toys, etc, space on the surface of the Earth, within an urban/suburban metro, is at the very top in terms of impact on others.
And it’s taxed the least.
If a developer builds in a way such that the demand for street parking outstrips supply, the street parking still has a cost, that cost is just expressed in time to find a spot, not dollars like you're suggesting. People unwilling to pay that time cost will find paid lots or not have a car (which is basically the dynamic in my building: people either pay $450 a month for a spot or they spend 10-15 minutes looking for a free street spot).
In practice, of course, existing residents feel entitled to "their" street parking and get mad when a new building with new people contending for those spots is built but there's no logical reason to preference residents who have previously lived there. This is where politics rears its head though.
I completely agree with your comment, but would also like to add that many cities have restricted or stopped permitting the construction of above-surface parkades, further distorting the market.
> People unwilling to pay that time cost will find paid lots or not have a car
If we're talking about commercial properties and zones, people unwilling to pay that time cost just won't come to the area.
This is correct which will incentivize the constructions of private lots etc (assuming the people you mentioned value their time more than the $ those lots cost). I don't see any reason you can't trust markets to address the supply of a commodity product.
Exactly, it's not like a Target going up in an area with no parking minimums is going to be like "great our massive big box store won't need any parking!" They're just going to be incentivized to build enough parking to fill their store to levels they expect based on the massive amount of data they have, and not just some gut-feeling BS from the 60s in the parking minimums regulations "department store - 20 spots per 100sqft" or some bullshit.
Get rid of street parking so drivers can't free load on the commons either, make parking something that you have to buy (with your rent or on your own) because it actually costs something.
Also, you no longer have to worry about kids appearing into the street between parked cars that obscure their presence even near crosswalks (that cars park way too close to because they can't find parking elsewhere). Win-win.
Changing street parking prices is a lot easier than changing buildings built with previous parking requirements.
I'd say change the requirements first, then if there's a surge in street parking demand there will be natural pressure to raise prices.
But I have a bike and use public transit and don’t want parking driving up my cost of housing.
You also don't want the streets you bike on to be clogged up with cars parking legally, parking illegally and circling the block continuously looking for parking.
Right, which is why the actual solution is mixed use development and a robust public transit system.
Ultimately this is a geometry problem. Cars are by far the least space-efficient method of transporting people; eventually your roads just can't accommodate any more traffic. If there's enough demand to visit a given area then anything that doesn't minimize cars will just make things worse.
> Cars are by far the least space-efficient method of transporting people
Not true in practice even if true in theory; in many places the average full-size bus contains fewer people than would fit in a minivan.
The problem is you need 5-10 years of reliable public transit in an area before non-transit users begin to convert (or transit users begin to move in).
Suburbs (with local amenities) with light rail connectivity into urban centres might actually be awesome.
I really wish someone would be a modern city from scratch.
If you myopically look at the instantaneous usage of infrastructure then you could argue that most roads are pointless because they are, on average, empty.
The bus might have less than 5 people on it at any given moment you observe, but over its >2 hour route it transports dozens or hundreds of people between stops.
Cars are the most time efficient though, assuming you can find parking relatively quick.
Depends on the trip. I've timed many trips bike vs. car in my city. Bike is usually faster (or very similar time) because the average speed through a city is actually pretty slow. There's a lot of "hurry up and wait" with cars (rush to get to the next red light) and on my bike I'm frequently passing long lines of cars stopped at lights.
And parking is a time sink. There's a place in my city that has huge parking garages with lots of parking but you still have to drive through a few levels of the garage, park, and then walk back down a few flights of stairs, then walk to your destination. I just park my bike right outside of my destination with the wheel lock. Street parking is always awful in populated cities, and I never have to worry about it. I always park right at my destination, where ever it is.
In suburbia, cars are faster because the average distance per trip is a lot longer. But it's ironic that the reason why the average distance is longer is BECAUSE it was built for cars so everything gets spread out! Cars are a solution to a problem that they created.
Not the case as density increases: once roads reach their capacity, space inefficiency quickly becomes time inefficiency. That's why some cities have started introducing congestion pricing.
Correct, I want others to use bikes, walk or transit for most urban travel, because it’s the best option as it’s cheap, fast, safe and convenient.
They already are, and the more clogged the streets are the slower the cars are moving, so the safer it is for me. So actually, I don't mind.
Distribute the currency appropriately so that pricing won't be abused.
Cars, and in particular, parking, kills cities. Parking is sponge that sucks all the life out of places.
The High Cost of Free Parking is an incredible book that shows exactly how awful parking has been for society.
Not in my city. Business is all dying, everyone avoids to go to the centre, everywhere the city fights cars, handy man charge extra just for comings, nah, it's basically gated communities now, well, they can have it, but life happens somewhere else then, where it can expand freely.
Cars do not allow life to happen or expand freely. Cars are prison, trapping people and communities in congestion.
Cars are very very very dangerous devices.
What is your city? What anti-car policies were implemented? Did city offer viable altenatives to driving?
> Cars, and in particular, parking, kills cities. Parking is sponge that sucks all the life out of places.
What's your solution to it then?
Mixed-use developments, walkable neighborhoods. When you make it easy to walk or bike to any place people need to go, parking is not necessary. Plenty of cities do it just fine, just not in the US.
Then invest in public transit (trains, mainly) for whatever isn't within walking distance.
If you built for cars you get traffic and congestion: if you built for people (transit, bike lanes, pedestrianization) you will get community
Also ban free parking
Maybe surface parking lots aren't the answer, but I do know that if there are places that I can't easily park at, I just don't go there unless absolutely necessary.
Nice to think, "the people will take trains!" but sometimes it doesn't work that way.
You might not go there, but the people who live in the homes you build where the parking garage used to be will go there.
Sure, removing parking essentially requires the neighborhood to become more self-sustaining. This works in really dense cities like New York and San Francisco but it requires enough desirability to fill the housing with people who have enough disposable income to replace the far bigger "catchment area" that the parking used to serve.
Which in turn affects the kind of economies that the new development can support. A car dealership? Needs parking and a large catchment area. Burrito shop? Probably not getting much destination traffic and can support itself on locals.
Those people may not be enough to support them. Cars take up space, but houses take up even more space. It is really easy for a Downtown to go into a downward spiral if you take away the ability of people to get there.
It need not happen, but all too often simple answers are wrong.
> It is really easy for a Downtown to go into a downward spiral if you take away the ability of people to get there.
I've seen this sad downward spiral multiple times, it is not a good outcome.
I used to live not too far from a town with a mellow but nice downtown center. Not a huge draw but many small nice restaurants and shops and there was steady business. Sensing a profit machine, the city filled all streets with parking meters. Turns out that while it was a nice area, it wasn't so irreplaceable, so nobody goes anymore. Business collapsed. I drove by last summer and everything is closed, the parking meters sit empty.
Same is happening now to the downtown one town over. It used to very vibrant awesome downtown, although small. Bars, restaurants, music venues, fun shops. I was there every night for something or other. Loved it. Easy free parking around. Some of the parking lots have office buildings now and the city lots have become very expensive. Much less activity there now, about a third of the venues are closed and the remaining ones are saying they can't last very long with fewer people going. While in its heyday this downtown was far more active than my first example, turns out it wasn't irreplaceable either. People just don't go anymore.
Point is that this tactic works only when the downtown is so established and so dense that people are going to go anyway even if parking is hard, like Manhattan.
> Point is that this tactic works only when the downtown is so established and so dense that people are going to go anyway even if parking is hard, like Manhattan.
Or the facilitating of cars has now made it more unattractive for people to go and hangout there even if it is easier to drive to.
> ome of the parking lots have office buildings now and the city lots have become very expensive. Much less activity there now, about a third of the venues are closed and the remaining ones are saying they can't last very long with fewer people going.
Sounds to me like that found a valueable use for their land and got rid of the low value things you really enjoyed...
Of course to you this is bad, and the city lost the night life, but that might or might not be worse overall. They seem to be a denser area despite it, for whatever that means.
Good point. And 'yard', if any. You can even see this at large events that are in urban centers.
Churchill Downs for example is surrounded by residential properties. At Derby time a lot of those enterprising people would let you park in their yard for $5 or $10 (maybe more now, it's been many years). These are not large properties - typical older shotgun houses. I seem to remember them getting 10 or more cars and that's not even counting the space the house itself is taking up.
Has there ever been a situation where taking away parking has lead to traffic dropping?
I've heard this, but I've never seen an example in practice. It seems like making things more walkable and bikeable, at the expense of cars, always increases foot-traffic, with no exception.
Yes, though I can't recall enough details that I could help you search.
Basically anytime it is tried in the suburbs where nobody is walking now nothing changes. When a lot of people are already walking you can increase traffic by getting rid of cars.
Details matter, most of the places people take aware cars are already dense areas and they tell you about it. However in a few cases someone who hasn't understood the context tried to apply a lesson it doesn't apply and it fails.
Sure, but this is why it makes sense to do it gradually. Things get built slowly and if the new buildings are taller they may actually take up less space (per person) than a car does, when considering ingress, egress, the road itself, etc.
You're right in the short term, but over time it does work that way. Look at Amsterdam.
Cambridge MA was rezoned in the mid-20th century to suburban standards, in a city where land in a mid-range neighborhood now costs $350-$400 per square foot. Besides putting in floor area ratio requirements that required most of the existing housing to be grandfathered, they added a requirement of one parking spot per unit.
If it's a traditional 1-car driveway that's about $70K worth of land, although in the end it's zero-sum because it takes away an on-street spot. Parking garages for larger developments probably cost as much or more per parking space - they use less land, but they're expensive to build.
It's insane, and they're trying to fix it, and approving special permits left and right to omit the spots.
So basically they basically took everyone's property rights for 50yr and now then give them back at the government's pleasure.
Now, I know nobody not rich enough to play the game owns land in Cambridge, but even the something tells me the guy who had a Trump 2024 sign on his garage, the guy who owns a business that's at odds with the city, something tells me their permits require the most $1-10k engineering expenses, lawyers fees, etc, etc, to get approved.
This article goes too far and yet not far enough. By trying to build more buildings that increase parking in yet smaller footprints and then charge for the added expense of all of that, why not just eliminate cars in these districts altogether. Park outside of the city, walk/bike/scooter/mass-transit within the city. Now you aren't trying to extract value from the simple act of wanting to exist in a space leaving more value to core economic goods and services.
We need to attack The Modern Moloch (99pi).
In a large metro with an extant, functional, mass transit system, sure. But do this in a cold place with no existing mass transit, and all you'll do is kill off downtown businesses and reduce property values to 0.
This experiment was kind of done in Buffalo in the 70s. They blocked off large swathes of downtown to build the above ground section of metro rail. This encouraged business to close downtown locations and move to suburban malls. That kind of retail never came back to downtown in the roughly 1 decade after completion of the metro. So you had a mass transit system that went effectively from nowhere to nowhere, and managed to kill the downtown retail corridor.
I think someone should try banning absolutely everything but emergency vehicles. No cars, no taxis, no vans, no trucks. Only cargo bikes, hand carts and maybe palanquins. Add some sort of uber type platform where you can hire someone to push wheelchair around. Limit speeds of mopeds and bicycles to say 10 or 15 km/h for pedestrian safety. This should make extremely liveable city if those promoting these things are right.
There’d be a revolt. You might be able to get away with doing this in some small area, maybe a city block or two. But anything more than that is just begging for a backlash from the local population.
My city, Utrecht, in the Netherlands is quite close this. No cars in the city center, no diesel vans for delivery, only busses and taxis can drive in certain roads in the center, bikes have priority on most roads cars can drive outside the center, mow they are reducing the speed limit to 30km/h everywhere in the city (following Amsterdam on this), and they are building a new car-free neighborhood for 40k people with no parking spaces and car roads.
Good first steps. Next is to get rid of those busses and taxis too. And truly open all roads to be freely used by pedestrians. Or even densification. You could fit buildings there for more people to live in. Then gradually expand this area so you have some reasonable like 40 km super block with no vehicles.
Large swaths of many European cities are like this. Copenhagen has a huge pedestrianized shopping area and it's amazing.
There's this - bloommerwede.nl - it looks awesome.
Look like there is still at least two bridges to block entirely. I think you could maybe build some sort of permanent market place on them.
I mean that's "Park and Ride" which already exists but the problem is that people, kinda rightfully, hate it. All the downsides of a car with all the downsides of a bus.
The solution, which has done in my city to genuinely smashing success is to nationalize the parking garages meaning government builds them, maintains them, and they're free forever. Dot them around a dense mixed use area and quite literally watch the money pour in. Everything is within grandpa walking distance of at least one garage, they're specced to over capacity so each one is never full, and it provides parking to the workers and apartments.
That sounds like a recipe for getting a ton of cars into your city. Think of parking garages as "traffic generators". If you cater to cars you shouldn't be surprised if what you get is more cars. It's literally sending the signal to people that it's fine (and encouraged) to drive cars everywhere. After all, your tax dollars are paying for all that infrastructure
Maybe some people are fully car-pilled, but many people want to live in an area that isn't so car-dependent, it tends to make everything more spread out, noisy, polluted, and congested. It also imposes very large personal costs.
I mean yeah… getting cars into your city is like the whole point. Cars are filled with people and people work and spend money. Specifically outside money. This is a city that has no subway or rail, vehicles are the only means of moving people. If you rip out the parking you won't get a vibrant walkable downtown, people won't start taking the bus, demand rail or move downtown because "the downtown area" just isn't that valuable of a destination. You will get a dead downtown. In a sad twist of fate when your "business district" doesn't have the capacity to absorb workers commuting or people going out on nights and weekends you'll see commercial buildings spread out even more to areas that can. Little pockets of nightlife and office space crop up next to newly built 5 over 1 apartments with plenty of parking built adjacent to major suburbs.
> Cars are filled with people and people work and spend money.
You're conflating people with cars. You want people and you're assuming that all those people must be attached to a car. There are other ways to get people to be populate an area which brings me to my second point...
> If you rip out the parking you won't get a vibrant walkable downtown
You will if you build a lot more housing in that area. If thousands more people are able to live right there then of course it'll become more vibrant. That parking garage could be home to hundreds of people. Instead it's temporary storage for cars. The problem is that suburbanites are going to fight tooth-and-nail to bring their cars. So what you get is cars.
If that's what you want, so be it. That doesn't sound like a vibrant place if everybody has to drive a car to get there, though. It's traffic by design.
> because "the downtown area" just isn't that valuable of a destination
This is another point people miss - 50 maybe 75 years ago the downtown area was a valuable destination because stores were smaller and what you needed could only be found at one or two places in a city; often downtown.
Cities are much bigger, but so are stores - you can go for months shopping nowhere but a SuperTarget or Walmart; and half the remainder can be delivered.
You make downtown desirable and then begin fixing the traffic problems. It takes 20+ years, but it can be done.
> that's "Park and Ride" which already exists but the problem is that people, kinda rightfully, hate it
... do people hate park and rides? Where I'm from (suburbs outside a US city) it's completely standard to park outside the city (in a garage or big lot at a train station) and take the train in. I find it quite comfortable personally.
It sounds like yours is specifically for buses, but I think it's that people generally don't like buses, they're slow and uncomfortable. The park and ride is fine when you can walk from it to a subway/train.
Parking at a train station or even a subway entrance sounds like heaven compared to ours which is a surface lot with a bus stop. But I'm not sure if "just have a subway or train network" is going to work for cities like Syracuse that don't already have them.
That's fair, yeah.
I do think parking garages are a pretty good solution, though obviously expensive (but cheaper than building out trains, like you said)
It is not convenient. It's freezing cold and icy, no walk, no bike, no scooter. Use mass-transit, sure, when you don't care about your life, when it's working, when it's coming regularly, when i don't have to exchange stations, but still, walking from home to a station and back, nah, it all sucks.
Imagining sitting in a cosy, warm pod, driving in a tunnel autonomously, point to point, and you have my vote.
Cars aren’t remotely cozy. They are incredibly stressful to drive, are a huge cost, and are dangerous to those inside and out.
Every complain about public transit being unsafe is twice as true about cars
That giant 5-level parking lot monstrocity could be a transport hub instead that has a warm metro stop, much better lighting and safety and perhaps even some light convenience retail.
> Imagining sitting in a cosy, warm pod, driving in a tunnel autonomously, point to point, and you have my vote.
They already have this. It's called a metro.
An unfortunate side effect of car dependence is people forgetting how to dress outside in the place they live, a skill humans had for thousands of years but apparently lost some time in the last ~100.
> Park outside of the city, walk/bike/scooter/mass-transit within
Very telling how these arguments are always the most ableist shit you've ever heard and yet people seem to think they're Very Progressive for making them.
People with disabilities disproportionately rely on transit. Many disabilities preclude driving all together, or require expensive modified vehicles.
Before using "ableist" as a cudgel, consider whether you know the first thing about the people you think you're defending.
It's not a bad thing to make places more accessible to children and senior citizens who can't (or shouldn't) be driving.
Cars suck for anybody who doesn’t have all of their faculties in order. Broke a leg, trains were my saviour.
Cars are great for people who do have all their limbs but lack the stamina to walk long distances, stand for long periods of time, carry large weights, etc.
Enabling and incentivizing able-bodied people to do things other than drive reduces traffic and parking pressure, expanding access for the people who are unable to function without cars (and long-term will, contrary to your concerns, reduce the portion of people whose physical condition prevents them from functioning without a car).
Dense cities mean you only need to walk short distances, and doing that often enough builds the stamina for long distances.
I see you've never had chronic respiratory issues or you would know that's not true.
Sorry the poster didn't put a specific, individualized carve out for all of the disabled groups of people who would obviously be allowed to use whatever method in whatever imagined, hypothetical future, and not kicked to the curb like trash.
It is generally more productive to assume charity in the people you are talking to, that of course no one is going to ignore that some people need cars to get around.
If they don't want to be replied to like they believe in absolutes then they should not speak in absolutes. I'm so tired of having to “““assume””” that people would be inclusive of me and my needs when they outright say the opposite. Do better.
... and yet, a place that is built for humans first instead of cars first would likely do just that.
I lived in Vancouver for years, near the downtown, near the SkyTrain and it was amazing. Back then I thought I would never live anywhere but the downtown of a city.
But, you know what, life changes. I know there’s hardcore folks out there who will cycle miles with their kids, or take them on transit, or even live with them in a 2 bedroom downtown apartment, but it is just too hard to live that way for many people. With a family, most people need more space, and they need to be able to get from their suburban home to some kind of shopping or work, in minimum time so that they can both take care of kids, maintain a career, and have a glimpse of a life for themselves.
We don’t need to have surface lots right in the middle of every downtown, but there needs to be somewhere for people to park.
Some European cities have car-free city centers. I live in one, which serves as the shopping center of roughly 1 million people living in the suburbs. If you want to shop in the city you need to park in one of the big underground parking lots and pay sth like more than 10 Euros/hour. Alternatively you can park just outside the city at a park & ride spot for 10 Euros/day and take the public transport included in the parking price.
It's inconvenient for people, yes. It was inconvenient to drive and park in the narrow streets of a medieval city too. This is unfortunately not easy to implement in North America, as the cities are relatively new. What we have feels very privileged.
I don't really buy this argument. I live a happily (nearly) car-free life with 3 kids. It's not hard, it really isn't. I bike them everywhere, we take transit. I even do our weekly grocery shopping by bike. I bike them to school year round (yes, even today when it was 10F this morning). I wouldn't consider myself "hardcore" at all. I'm just your average middle-aged dad.
I use our car approximately once per week. In 2024 I used my car a total of 32 times (I actually tallied it out for the whole year)
It's really just a matter of city design. Do you think there aren't families in Copenhagen who need to get to their job and shops? They manage with much lower car mileage than the average American. American suburbs are car-centric and those cars end up clogging up urban cores where people are trying to live their lives.
Many Americans/Canadians probably cannot even imagine what my life is like. They can't even picture what it means to pick up a week's worth of groceries for a family of 5 on a bike (with a kid!). It just doesn't even register that this is a possibility.
> American suburbs are car-centric and those cars end up clogging up urban cores where people are trying to live their lives.
I wonder how much of that is the case - anymore. I am suburb or even exurb, but I don't go "to the urban core" unless basically forced to; these days that's specialized medical only.
And surprisingly numbers of what people call "suburbs" are decently walkable, if you're willing to compromise on where you walk to - e.g., you might not have 20 restaurants in short walking distance, perhaps only 5.
(I've literally walked young kids - including a baby! - to school when it's -40°. A big big part of the change is to slowly move people to fewer car trips - not try to get them to reduce the number of cars. That comes later once they realize they only used it 32 times!)
Good thing that this article is not arguing for the elimination of parking!
Heck, I'm happy just parking close enough to walk to a downtown area, so parking doesn't necessarily have to be in the middle for me to use it, but there's no way I'm taking public transport to get close enough.
Just sounds absolutely miserable to prioritize that way of living that is so car dependent. So many negatives come from it:
- pollution
- traffic deaths
- heat generation from all the infra
- inefficient use of space
- ugly aesthetic of strip malls and parking lots
It doesn't have to be this way. We can do better to build diverse housing in our cities, leverage space at the ground level for businesses, invest in our transit to make it safer and more convenient.
Instead we just go with what's easy and continue to build roads and sprawl.
This is called out in the article as well but you're always welcome to join the party at https://parkingreform.org
It's a great group of advocates that are making impactful changes across the US and internationally.
Nary a mention of parking garages / underground parking?
Austrian cities have way more parking than one would expect, but it's nearly all underground and costs €
The benefits are huge, you have have dense commerical areas where you drive in, park underground, pay for some hours, then walk between the shops to do all your business.
> Nary a mention of parking garages / underground parking?
Yes, they're mentioned in the article. You clearly only checked out the title.
> How can we get less parking lots?
Switch from a culture of car use to walking, biking and public transport (buses, trams, light rail). And if people outside the city are coming in by car - let them park outside the town center and continue with public transport from there (while public transport is developed further afield; after that they would only drive their cars as far as the nearest train station, or even bike there).
I cannot recommend this Road Guy Rob video enough: https://youtu.be/K1TFOK4_07s?si=IwCK4sxVgw5Konu4
TL;DW: The difference in tax revenue between a surface parking lot and a business with subterranean parking is so vast, that cities can justify using value to underwrite the loans necessary for developers to do the work. (Called "Tax Increment Financing") This model is proving extremely successful with cities that try taking it on.
I enjoy the image [1] circling parking lots to show the land wasted right next to maybe 2x as much land consumed by a highway.
[1] https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/2...
"That is, how much value a parcel creates for the community compared to how much value it consumes simply by existing as land. Think of it like this:
Net Contribution=(Economic Output in $)−(Land Value in $)"
This calculation is shady. Land value fluctuates and already "bakes in" the predicted economic output... but multiplied across decades. Not to mention, land doesn't consume value by existing. the value never goes anywhere. Its opportunity cost, not a decrease in actual value.
Yes, there is value "missed out on", but it hasn't been destroyed. Because it never existed. And that value wouldn't have appeared out of nowhere. it would've required using up other resources that the parking lot wasn't.
I was also unconvinced by that hand-wavy analysis. Basically, "parking is negative value because I don't like it, look at this graph I made up."
In the US most places that aren't already highly urbanized are based on car culture. The culture isn't going to magically shift to transit if you take away parking, people will just complain and go elsewhere.
The article also completely abandons this angle later when it acknowledges that parking can be financially acceptable for the land owners. It also acknowledges that municipally mandated parking isn't the issue either.
How many parcels in e.g. downtown Syracuse are just vacant? That represents a much lower value than surface parking.
I definitely agree that parking in garages and integrated into buildings is much better but if you're unsatisfied with your downtown area I don't think targeting parking lots is the place to start. The real question is why don't people believe they can get more value out of it with further development? It's a little chicken-and-egg but you have to make the downtown a desirable place for those investments.
If you don't like parking you need to start with cars: give people a reasonable alternative. Too many are looking at this from a standpoint of "lets just get rid of parking" - without asking what people will do instead. All too often the answer is they will drive someplace in the suburbs instead where they get free parking.
If you want your downtowns to not have parking you need an alternative. In most cases that means you need to improve your transit in the entire city so people can get there.
It's a chicken and egg problem. If you retain the parking but build transit, people will keep doing what they've always done. Partly because people are resistant to change, partly because the areas you can take transit to are still mostly parking lots.
Places like Los Angeles are grappling with 30+ years of investing in transit with minimal changes in modeshare, because they continued investing in automobility at the same rate.
The carrot is great, but we need the stick too.
Many cities that have a dense core will have big municipal lots and garages to enable people to park somewhere they can walk from. Of course, the first thing urbanists go after is the presence of these lots in "high-value" real estate.
Solar panels is the answer. It keeps the people dry in the rain and the power can go right back to the city. Yes, it's not possible for all lots. For a vast majority of them, it's a net win.
Solar panels do not solve the problem of parking lots being community dead zones. You can put solar panels on anything - it'd be better if it were housing, a store, a pub, etc. than a parking lot.
Walmart allows overnight campers on their lots. Add free power and you get a pop-up community.
There are almost no Walmarts in urban centers.
Is that a joke? There's literally thousands of Walmarts in cities. https://mapstack.io/map/VkEPZb/map-of-walmart-supercenter-lo...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MY89q9pnrS-rB8t6Df4T...
Build it underground if feasible, or build a parking garage with high-economic-contribution units in upper floors.
Related: there's currently a bill in the NYS legislature which would allow cities to switch partly to a land-value tax. This is a pretty good local article about it: https://centralcurrent.org/how-a-state-bill-with-support-fro...
I currently live in a downtown area, and "walkable city" policies like this is why I'm going to move to a big open suburb when my lease is up. It makes life much more of a hassle, especially in cold weather.
i live in one of these cities and it's impossible to explain.
Parking maximums would be just as stupid as parking minimums. Instead of oversupply with inefficient use of space you'll get under supply with businesses starved of customers who can't find a convenient parking space.
Let the market decide how much parking is needed. It'll do a much better job than you ever could.
This is such a terrifying vision of the proper scope of government. We shouldn't use government to hurt people, and making someone's property too expensive to continue owning is definitely hurting them.
If you're really concerned with surface parking push the government to stop making it so expensive for companies to develop self-driving technology or to offer transportation services. If it's easier and less expensive for individuals to use transportation that they don't need to park anywhere the need for surface lots vanishes and those owning the property will look for something else to do with it.
This is comically backwards. Widespread car ownership is only possible due to bottomless government subsidy in the first place.
We shouldn't use the government to hurt people, so we should stop subsidizing cars that spew poison and crush children. Right?
> We shouldn't use government to hurt people, and making someone's property too expensive to continue owning is definitely hurting them.
But we are using government to hurt people — we are incentivizing (or worse, requiring) land owners to harm the surrounding community by not developing their property. A land value tax would simply shift some of the cost that is already burdening the rest of the community onto the unproductive property owners.
> those owning the property will look for something else to do with it
Not if there's a law mandating they maintain a certain amount of parking. Eliminating such laws is part of what the article is advocating for.
Other than that I agree.
So, the thing here, is that the property you're worried about is the guy who owns a parking lot, and not the people who are being overcharged on their personal homes to subsidize mister-surface-parking.