Strong Towns has called a good amount of attention to the mandatory parking requirements in many cities (and shockingly, many downtowns). Thankfully, it seems a fair number of cities are removing such restrictions, but hopefully it becomes more widespread.
In general I hope the US can urbanize, the older I get the more I realize it’s not really enjoyable living in this country. I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience.
(To be clear, I doubt most of the US will urbanize given the rural nature of a lot of it, but I hope at least bigger cities can move in that direction)
> having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice.
We're at a critical juncture here in the Twin Cities. The state DOT needs to re-build the interstate that cuts right through the entire metro area (I-94) for the first time since it was first built 50 years ago. There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. This would be amazing, the area around I-94 is, as you'd expect, quite unpleasant to be in. It's noisy, dirty, and dangerous. The interstate is infamous for being one of those roads that was planned to run through and destroy working class and Black neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s[1], and removing it would go some way to regaining what had been room for people to live. I think it's a bit of a longshot, but dang, I would love to see the cities recover that space for the people who actually live here, not just those who are driving through it. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I'm really hoping we don't blow it by just rebuilding the stupid thing.
I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas.
I was sitting in a coffee shop in a small town and I overheard a conversation next to me. Two elderly men were talking, and one of them made a comment to the effect of, "I like a rural town, so I try to vote to keep it that way." Two or three decades ago, this town really was a small farming town, but the population is growing and the town is changing. It's not becoming a city, though, not by any means! As the city (somewhat) nearby is becoming more expensive, the suburban sprawl is, well sprawling. The small rural town is transforming into a suburb of the city.
I would agree that this is a negative change for the small town, and I would argue that the solution is to urbanize the nearby city. There should be much more housing, and it should be much more affordable to live in the city. As it stands, many people want to live in that city, but find the housing prices unaffordable. So these people make a compromise between how much they are willing to pay on housing vs how long they are willing to travel (almost always by car) into the city. I count myself in this group.
Urban areas and rural areas complement one another, and there's pros and cons to living in either kind of place. However, post-WWII styled suburbs are, in my opinion, a net negative.
It should decrease housing costs as well. The rules in my area are two spots per bedroom - mandatory. But my building is in uptown Dallas and the main draw to the area is that people work in the area and walk to work. So many people don't own cars or are only a one home house hold.
And because it's a highrise parking spots are expensive. Like $50k+ each. And that goes directly to the price of housing in rents.
Meanwhile, even at the busiest our garage is more than half empty. What a waste.
Fayetteville Arkansas was one of the first towns to remove the mandatory parking restrictions and a ton of abandoned downtown buildings quickly became restaurants. They were absolutely right.
I'm so torn as to what I want my future living situation to be.
I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Maryland, spent a little time in my 20s in the denser-than-suburbs suburbia of the Bay Area, and then the past 14 years in San Francisco proper. More recently I've been spending 1-1.5 months at a time living out in "rural" parts of Truckee, CA.
I just don't know anymore. In San Francisco I live within a few minutes' walk of two dozen or so useful businesses (corner store, grocery, bakery, butcher, restaurants, bars, etc.), and everything I need to live I can get by walking no more than a half hour. I hate driving and love this.
In Truckee, the closest convenience store is a 40-minute walk, and all the other necessities are at least a 10-minute drive. On the other hand, I'm a light sleeper, and the intense darkness (moonlight, at most, only!) and quiet in Truckee was wonderful for restfulness. In SF we live near a Muni bus depot, where they clean buses well past midnight every night. I can mostly -- but not entirely -- get darkness with blackout blinds, but it's really not the same.
I definitely don't want to go back to the suburbs, but that sort of thing -- with much better city planning than most (all?) US suburbs have -- has potential to give me quiet and darkness, but the ability to walk everywhere I need to go.
Ultimately, though, what drives where I want to live is where my friends are. As I get older, I find it harder and harder to make new, close friends. Moving to a new place where I don't know anyone sounds like torture to me.
The US is urbanized...if you want it. There are plenty of places where people that enjoy living in urban areas can do so. However, to me, that sounds like an unenjoyable hellscape. Been there, done that. The beauty of the US is that people have choices, and aren't pigeonholed into someone else's idea of "enjoyable".
Parking minimums are required by cities because underparked development projects dump their parking problems on the surrounding neighborhoods. These types of externalities shouldn't just be hand-waved away in the name of "urbanization." The lack of parking creates real problems for residents, police and businesses in growing cities every day.
Parking lot requirements make sense in areas where cars are the only viable means of transportation. Removing those requirements only makes sense when other forms of transportation are provided to reduce the number of cars required to get people to the places of business.
Near me, the city is talking about removing a big parking lot and strip mall and turning it into a mixed use space, but as far as I’ve read there has been no talk of transportation. The area sits at the intersection of two stroads. It’s technically walkable, but it’s not a pleasant walk. It’s technically can be biked, but not without competing with cars for space on the road. There might be buses, but they are very infrequent and slow. Everyone I know would want to drive, as the alternatives are significantly worse than driving. If people can’t park, they simply won’t go.
I’d love to get rid of my car, but that requires the city, and region, make significant investments in public transit infrastructure. The non-car option can’t just be available for those who are willing to put in a lot of effort to avoid using a car. The non-car options need to be better than the car option. Easier, cheaper, safer, and more pleasant.
Removing parking lots makes driving worse, but doesn’t make the alternatives better.
The problem I have with the thinking in this article most of the parking lots are privately owned so saying 'tear them up and plant trees' is not something that can be implemented by the government.
If mandatory parking requirements did go down, and zoning was increased, then the people who own it would willingly put forth the effort to make the space more useful. It would also help sort out what is considered "unused" - which right now is a nebulous concept.
I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience.
What does hyper dense mean? And how is that detrimental? Tokyo meets all of your requirements, for example, but you would call that hyper dense for sure, right? The article is "about" Baltimore, MD. Does that city meet your threshold of hyper dense?
As with most things, a lot of this comes down to money. The more dense an area, the more use the things you want are used, and the more money they make, they more likely they are to thrive. The more dense an area, the bigger the tax base, the more money there is for nice things that maybe don't make money on their own.
I've long suspected that this model is meant for cities to make money on DUIs. They close the public transit before the bars in almost every city across the country, and they ensure the bars are far enough away and restrictive enough that you have to drive. Then they tax the hell out of taxi services to ensure that there aren't enough cabs to take you home and rides can exceed $100 (which is a lot in most of the country by area, not population). It's zoned this way where bars and restaurants aren't near houses, in summary.
If they did it like Spain, for example, where you can just walk out of your home, sit on the street at any restaurant, and drink wine with your friends, we'd have exactly what you're describing.
But then they wouldn't be able to rake in DUI profits.
you don't necessarily need to urbanize. just make things more walkable. Instead of having 1 large library or grocery store the size of a theme park, have 10 smaller ones in walking distance instead.
"Part of this is a result of poor planning and ordinance-making that long ago overcompensated for the wide use of automobiles. Henry Grabar, a staff writer at Slate, mentions this in a book published last year, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. ”On a national level, certainly, there’s far more parking than we need,” Grabar said in an interview. “There are at least four parking spaces for every car, meaning that the parking stock is no more than 25 percent full at any given time. And some of those cars are moving at any given time, so parking may be a good deal emptier than that.”
I'm still reading this book, but so far it's been one of the few books I'd recommend to anyone. I try to be as stoic as possible, but contents of this book has managed to actually anger me. It makes it so clear that how much corruption and bad policies impact our lives.
I'd also question how realistically anyone can estimate the number of parking spots that exist nationally, but regardless, parking space isn't exactly an elastic resource. To be able to meet peak demand, you have to overprovision, and peak demand isn't evenly spread out, so it's not like any particular neighborhood or business can just compute what percentage of land area they take up in a city and multiply that by the number of cars registered in that city. Roads are the same way for the same reason. There is far more available road area than could be taken up by all cars in the world even if they were all driving at the same time.
Even in residential areas, the rise of AirBNB is causing an accordion effect in parking availability, at least in my neighborhood. I live downtown in a place that doesn't have much in the way of garage space or driveways so the streets are heavily used for parking and there is enough space generally speaking for everyone who lives here, but come weekends and event times now that so many condos have become temporary party houses people rent so they can trash, this floods the streets with cars from out of the area and suddenly the people who actually live here have nowhere to park.
I'd even go a step further and set a maximum amount of parking in a given area to disincentivize driving. As an extreme example, if a mall is only allowed to have 5 parking spaces then they'll need to design around supporting public transit. So many places in the US are almost impossible to live in without owning a car - you might have bike paths if you're lucky, and in many places there aren't even sidewalks
Be careful what you wish for, as this kind of rules can quickly have unintended consequences.
I used to live in an English town that set up maximum number of parking spaces for new homes. On paper looks good, as they were trying to incentivize public transport as you mention.
However the outcome was that single family homes were virtual unaffected, as they usually have a double garage plus driveway, while people on apartment blocks had severe parking limitations. In other words, if you were well off enough to buy a house you were gold, and the less well off people had to bear most of the burden.
Shopping centers are a bad example for this, because if you buy stuff, you somehow have to take it home, and carrying a carton of 12 liters of milk, 2 10-packs of toilet paper, a bag of frozen stuff and shower curtain rod, all of that in your hands on a bus, is well.. a pain.
Also, at least over here, most shopping centers have underground parking.
The "historic city center" and all that crap... that I understand... noone goes there for weekly shopping, but instead people go there to hang out, drink coffee, eat, etc.... public transport works great for that. Malls, shopping centers or even larger stores? Nope.
That's an ideal state but is a real chicken and egg problem, the same problem that's soft locked US cities as car centric as they are, you can't mandate away car reliance without the public transit to back it up and transit will have low ridership if it's even slightly less convenient than driving.
The problem is either you cannot get the number perfect and so you must make it too large thus doing nothing over not setting a limit at all. If the number is too low you will discover next election people who think they need to park (they may or may not be right) are mad enough to vote you out and undo things. By just not setting a limit you let every property owner decide for themselves what is right - and if they discover they are too low they can hire someone to build more parking (at their expense), while if they decide they have too many they can replace parking with something else - like another building.
I’ve come to realize that urban forests double as homeless camps. My homeless camp has is rife with crime, drug over doses, violence and fire. Last month I’ve had a leaf blower stolen, my car window broken, and an explosion due to them throwing a propane tank into a camp fire.
Since they’re tucked into a forest - the city won’t take any action. The city does take action on homeless camps that are more visible. I don’t mean to conflate urban forests with homelessness. However that’s very much the case here in Austin, Tx.
I find this sort of logic absurd. “There are at least four parking spaces for every car, meaning that the parking stock is no more than 25 percent full at any given time. And some of those cars are moving at any given time"
So, if I have a two car garage in my house, a parking spot at work, and a parking spot at the local shopping district, how else is this going to work? I can't bring my parking spot with me. The idea that we should look at per existing car utilization as any kind of indicator is ridiculous. Now, if any of those spots is never used, that may be a good indicator- but it might be because a building isn't fully leased at the moment as well.
The idea is that if parking lots are built, they should be at the very least well utilized. We have a big problem of shopping centres over-building parking. For example, optimizing for everyone being able to always find a spot even at peak holiday seasons. As opposed to optimizing for having that parking lot being ~90% full for most of the day.
The fact that your home garage and work parking lot are also empty most of the time is also a huge problem. It makes cities much larger than they need to be, and serving public transit across them impossible.
You don't have a parking spot at the local parking district. You share your spot with everyone else there. Sure you have one at home and one at work, but everything else is shared with people who use your spot when you are not there.
Not really. Some parks/green areas are good. However it is easy to put in more than are needed and make the city less dense which is not good for the city or your ability to do some of the things that make a city great.
"I don’t know that anyone besides Grabar is even thinking about this"
A great many people are. Urbanist Xitter (Mastodon, Threads, whatever) is very much alive and well. The closest thing to a consensus about what to do with the reclaimed space is some trees, but primarily medium-density affordable housing, ideally with retail on the bottom. Sometimes the space can be used to make room for transit, too. By making these places denser and more livable, it prevents even more trees, meadows, etc. from being cleared for more exurbs.
I'd start with Suburban Nation, move on to StrongTowns and MissingMiddle, then take it from there.
I think it was George Carlin that said put affordable housing on golf courses?
More seriously, if you have a brownfield ex industrial site, will trees etc grow ok there? Does converting brownfield sites to meadows or forests pose any risks to nearby humans?
The problem I have is most cities have plenty of green parks already. In a few places they could use a new park, but in general there are far more parking lots (often 50% of a city is parking lot!) than there is need for green space. Much better is tear up a parking lot and replace it with a building that lets people do something in the city other than pretend they are in a rural area. Nothing wrong with rural areas and parks, but there is more to life than those. Put in more apartments, offices, restaurants, opera houses - all those other things that make a city great.
You could always put together a group and purchase the land from the current owners. Once you take possession, put the land in trust, tear it up and plant trees. You could potentially recover some costs by donating to the city but there is always a chance that they would decide to change the zoning in the future.
unless they have a purpose in mind for said property, a lot of cities are hesitant to do that. because it takes the property off the tax roll when the city accepts it.
If only 75% of spaces are empty, while sad, that seems shockingly efficient. If you have a car you need at least one place to park for each location you will ever visit with it. That means most people are only driving their cars to 4 places. Home, work, school and the grocery store? Hopefully for store owners, not all at the same time. I would have expected a lot more unused spaces in parking lots. If we have cars we should be expecting a hell of a lot of empty parking lots. Maybe cities should just require some minimum amount of plant life in the lots themselves. I'm sure customers would approve.
Also any expectation of "the demise of malls and the decline of brick-and-mortar retail" is hasty. Globally, during the pandemic, 80%+ of retail was brick and mortar [1], and it actually increased in 2021, though it appears to be correcting. Research shows consumers don't trust stores with an online only presence [2]. I think banking on that will be too little too late. We need better solutions sooner.
Baltimore has no money, ain't nobody paying for that.
In cities outside of Baltimore, where there aren't 20,000 abandoned buildings (when last I lived there), where there's a public housing shortage and a rising cost of living, they need affordable homes, not trees. I love trees but they're better for cities that don't have housing shortages, yet have the money to pay for trees.
Baltimore (and Philly, similar in some respects) has large concrete and brick deserts. But they also have large and small parks with lots of trees. That's where you get mugged after dusk (and sometimes during the day). You don't walk through Patterson Park at night.
IMO it's a privileged thing to think of first. Certain websites that cater to this kind of post don't seem to discuss civic issues from the perspective of the people who need the most help. It's more a certain kind of person who's more interested in a closer walk to the Starbucks and Trader Joe's.
I have been to parking lots covered in mature Aleppo Pines (which smell great in the heat) and from far away you couldn't really tell there was a parking lot there.
A lot of places would benefit from more housing, too, or new business, or almost anything really. A parking lot is about the worst option possible.
We look at a large section of a land and decide that we will destroy all life on it, pave over it with asphalt (so that even the rain cannot drain into the soil), all so that large vehicles can sit there unused. It really is the lowest opinion one can have on a piece of Earth.
Why not both? Trees in the manner they're describing where it's just helping the forested area expand back out doesn't require human involvement either.
The selfish human reason to want trees as a natural heat regulator is I think alone worth the benefit in areas with lots of asphalt where people will be near.
Serious question: Why not plant trees & shrubs & grasses in parking lots? (as in, in containers or medians). Shade the parking lot and make it less hot. Make it prettier to park in and attract birds & other wildlife. You could even charge people for the privilege of parking somewhere nice for a change.
Meadows or trees would be nice, but I've noticed that underused parking lots tend to be common places to build restaurants and other retail. Not as great as trees or meadows but on the other hand I'd rather the new retail goes on parking lots rather than replacing currently existing trees & meadows.
I'd like to see more solar covered parking lots. Bonus points for integrated EV charging stations. They would be great in the hotter parts of the country. How much fuel/energy is spent cooling cars back down after they have sat in the sun for an hour?
How long does it take to break even on the carbon output of asphalt demolition and haul-away vs carbon input of optimal density trees planted in the same space?
It's interesting reading the comments that are from a US perspective, where there are vast amounts of untamed land for wildlife and recreation. Many US commenters are highlighting that they would rather that cities be cities, because there is already plenty of green space outside cities.
In the UK, most land is either farmland, or built on, so urban green areas are much more important for wildlife. There is a drive in the UK to create more "green corridors" linking green areas together, but this is facing stiff competition with the drive to develop second cities.
Ripping up parking lots (car parks) and planting trees would be even more important in the UK.
Baltimore resident. I went to that staples for the first time a week ago and thought the parking lot was strangely huge. I don’t think an urban forest makes sense there tho.
Baltimore actually has a decent amount of forest and park per capita. The Roland park country club is becoming a public/private thing.
Getting around town without a car sucks though. There’s no growth to incentivize bigger transit projects. More busses would be nice.
I don’t think Baltimore and other hollowed out blue collar cities need trees as much as they need to enable entirely different industries. And I don’t know what those industries are! But there’s a lot of talented craftspeople here, and not enough capital to pay them.
[+] [-] wtp1saac|2 years ago|reply
In general I hope the US can urbanize, the older I get the more I realize it’s not really enjoyable living in this country. I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience.
(To be clear, I doubt most of the US will urbanize given the rural nature of a lot of it, but I hope at least bigger cities can move in that direction)
[+] [-] coldpie|2 years ago|reply
We're at a critical juncture here in the Twin Cities. The state DOT needs to re-build the interstate that cuts right through the entire metro area (I-94) for the first time since it was first built 50 years ago. There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. This would be amazing, the area around I-94 is, as you'd expect, quite unpleasant to be in. It's noisy, dirty, and dangerous. The interstate is infamous for being one of those roads that was planned to run through and destroy working class and Black neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s[1], and removing it would go some way to regaining what had been room for people to live. I think it's a bit of a longshot, but dang, I would love to see the cities recover that space for the people who actually live here, not just those who are driving through it. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I'm really hoping we don't blow it by just rebuilding the stupid thing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_94_in_Minnesota#His...
[+] [-] UtopiaPunk|2 years ago|reply
I was sitting in a coffee shop in a small town and I overheard a conversation next to me. Two elderly men were talking, and one of them made a comment to the effect of, "I like a rural town, so I try to vote to keep it that way." Two or three decades ago, this town really was a small farming town, but the population is growing and the town is changing. It's not becoming a city, though, not by any means! As the city (somewhat) nearby is becoming more expensive, the suburban sprawl is, well sprawling. The small rural town is transforming into a suburb of the city.
I would agree that this is a negative change for the small town, and I would argue that the solution is to urbanize the nearby city. There should be much more housing, and it should be much more affordable to live in the city. As it stands, many people want to live in that city, but find the housing prices unaffordable. So these people make a compromise between how much they are willing to pay on housing vs how long they are willing to travel (almost always by car) into the city. I count myself in this group.
Urban areas and rural areas complement one another, and there's pros and cons to living in either kind of place. However, post-WWII styled suburbs are, in my opinion, a net negative.
[+] [-] J_Shelby_J|2 years ago|reply
And because it's a highrise parking spots are expensive. Like $50k+ each. And that goes directly to the price of housing in rents.
Meanwhile, even at the busiest our garage is more than half empty. What a waste.
D magazine even used a picture of my garage in their article: https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/12/the-city-of-da...
[+] [-] 7thaccount|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|2 years ago|reply
I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Maryland, spent a little time in my 20s in the denser-than-suburbs suburbia of the Bay Area, and then the past 14 years in San Francisco proper. More recently I've been spending 1-1.5 months at a time living out in "rural" parts of Truckee, CA.
I just don't know anymore. In San Francisco I live within a few minutes' walk of two dozen or so useful businesses (corner store, grocery, bakery, butcher, restaurants, bars, etc.), and everything I need to live I can get by walking no more than a half hour. I hate driving and love this.
In Truckee, the closest convenience store is a 40-minute walk, and all the other necessities are at least a 10-minute drive. On the other hand, I'm a light sleeper, and the intense darkness (moonlight, at most, only!) and quiet in Truckee was wonderful for restfulness. In SF we live near a Muni bus depot, where they clean buses well past midnight every night. I can mostly -- but not entirely -- get darkness with blackout blinds, but it's really not the same.
I definitely don't want to go back to the suburbs, but that sort of thing -- with much better city planning than most (all?) US suburbs have -- has potential to give me quiet and darkness, but the ability to walk everywhere I need to go.
Ultimately, though, what drives where I want to live is where my friends are. As I get older, I find it harder and harder to make new, close friends. Moving to a new place where I don't know anyone sounds like torture to me.
[+] [-] stronglikedan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] travoc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] al_borland|2 years ago|reply
Near me, the city is talking about removing a big parking lot and strip mall and turning it into a mixed use space, but as far as I’ve read there has been no talk of transportation. The area sits at the intersection of two stroads. It’s technically walkable, but it’s not a pleasant walk. It’s technically can be biked, but not without competing with cars for space on the road. There might be buses, but they are very infrequent and slow. Everyone I know would want to drive, as the alternatives are significantly worse than driving. If people can’t park, they simply won’t go.
I’d love to get rid of my car, but that requires the city, and region, make significant investments in public transit infrastructure. The non-car option can’t just be available for those who are willing to put in a lot of effort to avoid using a car. The non-car options need to be better than the car option. Easier, cheaper, safer, and more pleasant.
Removing parking lots makes driving worse, but doesn’t make the alternatives better.
[+] [-] fasthands9|2 years ago|reply
If mandatory parking requirements did go down, and zoning was increased, then the people who own it would willingly put forth the effort to make the space more useful. It would also help sort out what is considered "unused" - which right now is a nebulous concept.
[+] [-] dfxm12|2 years ago|reply
What does hyper dense mean? And how is that detrimental? Tokyo meets all of your requirements, for example, but you would call that hyper dense for sure, right? The article is "about" Baltimore, MD. Does that city meet your threshold of hyper dense?
As with most things, a lot of this comes down to money. The more dense an area, the more use the things you want are used, and the more money they make, they more likely they are to thrive. The more dense an area, the bigger the tax base, the more money there is for nice things that maybe don't make money on their own.
[+] [-] trimethylpurine|2 years ago|reply
If they did it like Spain, for example, where you can just walk out of your home, sit on the street at any restaurant, and drink wine with your friends, we'd have exactly what you're describing.
But then they wouldn't be able to rake in DUI profits.
[+] [-] tomcar288|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomcar288|2 years ago|reply
"Part of this is a result of poor planning and ordinance-making that long ago overcompensated for the wide use of automobiles. Henry Grabar, a staff writer at Slate, mentions this in a book published last year, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. ”On a national level, certainly, there’s far more parking than we need,” Grabar said in an interview. “There are at least four parking spaces for every car, meaning that the parking stock is no more than 25 percent full at any given time. And some of those cars are moving at any given time, so parking may be a good deal emptier than that.”
[+] [-] ayberk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nonameiguess|2 years ago|reply
Even in residential areas, the rise of AirBNB is causing an accordion effect in parking availability, at least in my neighborhood. I live downtown in a place that doesn't have much in the way of garage space or driveways so the streets are heavily used for parking and there is enough space generally speaking for everyone who lives here, but come weekends and event times now that so many condos have become temporary party houses people rent so they can trash, this floods the streets with cars from out of the area and suddenly the people who actually live here have nowhere to park.
[+] [-] MichaelZuo|2 years ago|reply
What's the original source for that statistic?
[+] [-] e_i_pi_2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angarg12|2 years ago|reply
I used to live in an English town that set up maximum number of parking spaces for new homes. On paper looks good, as they were trying to incentivize public transport as you mention.
However the outcome was that single family homes were virtual unaffected, as they usually have a double garage plus driveway, while people on apartment blocks had severe parking limitations. In other words, if you were well off enough to buy a house you were gold, and the less well off people had to bear most of the burden.
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|2 years ago|reply
Also, at least over here, most shopping centers have underground parking.
The "historic city center" and all that crap... that I understand... noone goes there for weekly shopping, but instead people go there to hang out, drink coffee, eat, etc.... public transport works great for that. Malls, shopping centers or even larger stores? Nope.
[+] [-] rtkwe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluGill|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggliemon|2 years ago|reply
I’ve come to realize that urban forests double as homeless camps. My homeless camp has is rife with crime, drug over doses, violence and fire. Last month I’ve had a leaf blower stolen, my car window broken, and an explosion due to them throwing a propane tank into a camp fire.
Since they’re tucked into a forest - the city won’t take any action. The city does take action on homeless camps that are more visible. I don’t mean to conflate urban forests with homelessness. However that’s very much the case here in Austin, Tx.
[+] [-] mattmcknight|2 years ago|reply
So, if I have a two car garage in my house, a parking spot at work, and a parking spot at the local shopping district, how else is this going to work? I can't bring my parking spot with me. The idea that we should look at per existing car utilization as any kind of indicator is ridiculous. Now, if any of those spots is never used, that may be a good indicator- but it might be because a building isn't fully leased at the moment as well.
[+] [-] JambalayaJim|2 years ago|reply
The fact that your home garage and work parking lot are also empty most of the time is also a huge problem. It makes cities much larger than they need to be, and serving public transit across them impossible.
[+] [-] bluGill|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] datadrivenangel|2 years ago|reply
More green spaces are good for cities.
[+] [-] quesera|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluGill|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notacoward|2 years ago|reply
A great many people are. Urbanist Xitter (Mastodon, Threads, whatever) is very much alive and well. The closest thing to a consensus about what to do with the reclaimed space is some trees, but primarily medium-density affordable housing, ideally with retail on the bottom. Sometimes the space can be used to make room for transit, too. By making these places denser and more livable, it prevents even more trees, meadows, etc. from being cleared for more exurbs.
I'd start with Suburban Nation, move on to StrongTowns and MissingMiddle, then take it from there.
[+] [-] bloopernova|2 years ago|reply
I think it was George Carlin that said put affordable housing on golf courses?
More seriously, if you have a brownfield ex industrial site, will trees etc grow ok there? Does converting brownfield sites to meadows or forests pose any risks to nearby humans?
[+] [-] bluGill|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] osigurdson|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericcumbee|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trimethylpurine|2 years ago|reply
Also any expectation of "the demise of malls and the decline of brick-and-mortar retail" is hasty. Globally, during the pandemic, 80%+ of retail was brick and mortar [1], and it actually increased in 2021, though it appears to be correcting. Research shows consumers don't trust stores with an online only presence [2]. I think banking on that will be too little too late. We need better solutions sooner.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECOMPCTSA/
[2] https://www.kbbreview.com/6657/news/consumers-lack-trust-onl...
[+] [-] throwawaaarrgh|2 years ago|reply
In cities outside of Baltimore, where there aren't 20,000 abandoned buildings (when last I lived there), where there's a public housing shortage and a rising cost of living, they need affordable homes, not trees. I love trees but they're better for cities that don't have housing shortages, yet have the money to pay for trees.
Baltimore (and Philly, similar in some respects) has large concrete and brick deserts. But they also have large and small parks with lots of trees. That's where you get mugged after dusk (and sometimes during the day). You don't walk through Patterson Park at night.
IMO it's a privileged thing to think of first. Certain websites that cater to this kind of post don't seem to discuss civic issues from the perspective of the people who need the most help. It's more a certain kind of person who's more interested in a closer walk to the Starbucks and Trader Joe's.
[+] [-] mytailorisrich|2 years ago|reply
I have been to parking lots covered in mature Aleppo Pines (which smell great in the heat) and from far away you couldn't really tell there was a parking lot there.
[+] [-] falcolas|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UtopiaPunk|2 years ago|reply
We look at a large section of a land and decide that we will destroy all life on it, pave over it with asphalt (so that even the rain cannot drain into the soil), all so that large vehicles can sit there unused. It really is the lowest opinion one can have on a piece of Earth.
[+] [-] smallerfish|2 years ago|reply
In 99%+ of east coast US environments, grassland will become forest naturally (over time), even with the deer population as it is.
[+] [-] Spivak|2 years ago|reply
The selfish human reason to want trees as a natural heat regulator is I think alone worth the benefit in areas with lots of asphalt where people will be near.
[+] [-] dcotter|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ortusdux|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gfs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uudecoded|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notorandit|2 years ago|reply
1. What to plant is important as not all places/soils are the same.
2. Are you also thinking about maintenance (watering and pruning included)?
3. Are you also thinking about environmental compatibility with existing fauna and flora?
Planting trees is not trivial!
[+] [-] JR1427|2 years ago|reply
In the UK, most land is either farmland, or built on, so urban green areas are much more important for wildlife. There is a drive in the UK to create more "green corridors" linking green areas together, but this is facing stiff competition with the drive to develop second cities.
Ripping up parking lots (car parks) and planting trees would be even more important in the UK.
[+] [-] efields|2 years ago|reply
Baltimore actually has a decent amount of forest and park per capita. The Roland park country club is becoming a public/private thing.
Getting around town without a car sucks though. There’s no growth to incentivize bigger transit projects. More busses would be nice.
I don’t think Baltimore and other hollowed out blue collar cities need trees as much as they need to enable entirely different industries. And I don’t know what those industries are! But there’s a lot of talented craftspeople here, and not enough capital to pay them.
Or we go anarcho-collectivism.