@LitmanVTPI study: more land is devoted to roads and parking spaces per automobile than is devoted to each person's house.

"Menos Cajones Más Ciudad" ("Less Parking More City") is a terrific new short video by the wonderful folks at ITDP...
Posted by Todd Litman on Friday, April 3, 2015

Parking Madness 2015! It's depressing what we've done to downtowns @schmangee @StreetsblogUSA

Sorted through 26 N. American parking craters this year to make this list. http://t.co/ZoPInUpVFg pic.twitter.com/xiKKlMphxy
— Angie Schmitt (@schmangee) March 12, 2015

It's depressing what we've done to downtowns. We've featured 48 of these now. It's endless http://t.co/ZoPInUpVFg pic.twitter.com/O7khMKn1gw

— Angie Schmitt (@schmangee) March 12, 2015

More at: Parking Madness 2015! First Match: Camden vs. Mobile | Streetsblog USA

---

From Institute for Transportation and Development Policy — Infographic: Sizing Up Parking Space

Sizing Up Parking Space - Institute for Transportation and Development Policy
Twitter: @ITDP_HQ

From @planetizen — Does your city need a 12-step program to kick its parking addiction?

Post by The Sidewalk Ballet.

How @DonaldShoup Will Find You a Parking Spot

Post by Nanaimo Commons.

From Old Urbanist — We Are the 25%: Looking at Street Area PercentagesAnd Surface Parking

Original work: photoLith

Several months ago I posted a chart in which I calculated the proportion of land given over to buildable space, right-of-ways and park space for each of 22 cities, or city neighborhoods.  In response, one commenter suggested that I perform the same exercise with off-street parking included as a separate category.  Although the work of Chris McCahill, which I featured last week, does just this for a number of cities, another commenter directed me to this thread at Skyscraper Page, where a number of people have mapped surface parking lots for several American cities.  I'd like to feature three of those here (which I've further edited to show parking structures and park space), while adding one of my own.  No guarantee of perfect accuracy is given. Red shows surface parking, yellow shows above-ground parking garages, and green shows park space: More at: Old Urbanist: We Are the 25%: Looking at Street Area Percentages and Surface Parking

From Streetfilms — Parking Craters: The Scourge of American Downtowns

Streetsblog's Angie Schmitt popularized the term "parking crater," and she explains it simply: A parking crater is "a depression in the middle of an urban area formed by the absence of buildings."

Different types of "meteors" left behind parking craters in the 20th Century -- sprawl subsidies, the erosion of manufacturing, highway building. Whatever the cause, parking craters absolutely destroy sections of downtowns and make the environment more inhospitable and unattractive for people. In these areas, there is virtually no street life. In warm weather the asphalt makes the air more oppressive. It's hell on earth. It's a parking crater.Parking Craters: Scourge of American Downtowns from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.

From Streetsblog.net — How Silver Spring, Maryland Outgrew Its Parking Lots

Photo: Dan Reed for GGwash

In healthy urban areas, people always complain that there’s not enough parking. And they still do that in Silver Spring, Maryland, says Dan Reed at Greater Greater Washington. But they’re wrong. The city’s downtown parking supply is only about 58 percent occupied on an average day. Even as the city has grown, more parking is sitting unused thanks to the efforts of local leaders. Here’s how they did it: Read more: How Silver Spring, Maryland, Outgrew Its Parking Lots | Streetsblog.net

From Bloomberg Businessweek —Cities Haunted by Too Many Parking Spaces

After decades of copying sprawling suburbs by accommodating the automobile, U.S. cities are starting to tear up their slabs of asphalt.

In Philadelphia, construction will begin by July on a 700-room hotel on a plot near City Hall where vehicles have parked since 1991. In Baltimore, an apartment tower may rise on a parking lot along the Inner Harbor.

Offering developers tax incentives and zoning changes, officials are seeking to remove parking facilities in favor of projects that will draw more revenue, while making their communities friendlier to pedestrians as people eschew cars. Read more: Parking Lots Demolished in Cities’ Revenue Bid as Driving Wanes - Businessweek

From Medium — You’re a Street Designer (you just don’t know it yet) — The Design Principles Behind Streetmix

Chances are that smaller streets around you are changing,  — as is our way of thinking about them. While streets were originally built with people in mind (a century ago, it wasn’t uncommon for parents to just feel safe to tell their kids to go play in the street, even in a big city center), throughout the last century we largely surrendered them to car traffic. However, many city planners and urban designers are revisiting that approach and re-imagining streets as once again more pedestrian-, bike-, and public transit-friendly.

A typical way to communicate new ideas is via a “street section” — a slice of the road illustrating all of its parts side by side, from the building on one end, to the building on the other.

This web-based street section editor was built as a side project by a small team of fellows at Code for America, a non-profit dedicated to finding ways to apply modern technology practices to city governments. Code for America believes in open source, open data, and citizen engagement through web applications, and Streetmix is a direct extension of that way of thinking. More at: You’re a street designer (you just don’t know it yet) — Medium 

---

Recently here in Nanaimo on a Facebook neighbourhood group page discussion turned to traffic calming on a residential thru-street and with Streetmix I was able to contribute this street redesign: 

I have become convinced over my 22+ years of practice that municipal requirements for traffic studies & parking studies are usually a waste.

— Brent Toderian (@BrentToderian) February 17, 2014

Cities need transit to work. MT @urbandata: What cities look like during #transit shut-downs. DC in 1974 bus strike pic.twitter.com/igSezFpvDr
— Brent Toderian (@BrentToderian) January 2, 2014

Lewis Villegas on Oakridge — "density without urbanism will add sprawl and congestion"

Oakridge—Vancouver’s best suburban mall—is proposing towers in a BIG way. Adding density without urbanism will add sprawl and congestion. A subway stop by itself is not enough reason for towers. Oakridge neighbourhood lacks the mixture, number and quality of services and jobs available downtown in the only urban zone we have in the region. This is towerization at its worst! And the mistake is being repeated at Gateway minutes south on the Canada Line and elsewhere along our transit spines. Read more: The Towerization of NO-akridge | lewisnvillegas

From Grist — Parking Rules Raise Your Rent

City requirements for off-street parking spaces raise rents. They jack it up a lot at the bottom of the housing ladder. Proportionally speaking, the bigger the quota and the smaller the apartment, the larger the rent hike. For one-bedroom apartments with two parking places, as is required in places including Bothell and Federal Way, Wash., as much as one-third of the rent may actually pay for parking. A flotilla of studies supports that claim, but first, a case study of residential real estate development may illuminate how critical parking is to the affordability of housing. Read More: Parking rules raise your rent | Grist

From Grist — Who Parked in my Spot?!: Neighbors, Cars, and “Your” Curb Space

Soon after advertising executive Necia Dallas moved into a house in Portland, Ore., she found on her door a detailed, hand-drawn map specifying the curb spots where each resident was permitted to park. The map, left by an anonymous neighbor, indicated that Necia was welcome to park in front of her own house but that it was, “Optional! Because of your driveway. ” Jon Stahl of Seattle also got a parking map as a house-warming gift (pictured above). Read more: Who parked in my spot?!: Neighbors, cars, and “your” curb space | Grist

I used to get note on my car when I parked in front of people's houses in Astoria. Ridiculous! @1sidewalkballet @grist
— Glenn McAnanama (@glenn_mcan) July 28, 2013

From Slate Magazine — Free Parking Isn’t Free

Why so much parking smack-dab in the middle of Chicago’s Loop, a walkable area that’s well-served by heavy-rail transit and many buses? The culprit is a regulatory scourge so ubiquitous as to be nearly invisible: regulatory parking mandates that tax the poor to subsidize the rich while damaging the environment and the broader economy.

Rules requiring that new buildings come with parking spaces attached are so omnipresent that their absence induces confusion. A recent Boston Globe article by Casey Ross about local parking regulation was headlined “City Wants a Cutback on New Parking” and described city officials as “deliberately discouraging construction of new spaces.” What’s actually happening, as Ross’ reporting makes clear, is that officials are allowing the construction of buildings with a lower ratio of dwellings to parking spaces than previously required. Specifically, “in most cases, officials are allowing the ratio to slip to 0.75 spaces per residence,” rather than the one or two spaces that had been the previous rule. Read more: Free parking isn’t free: Parking mandates hurt America’s cities. - Slate Magazine

From Planetizen — The Relationship Between Parking, Perception & Local Businesses

You ever hear the one about the Main Street merchant who went out of business because he lost all his parking? No? Are you sure? But, it's common knowledge that business goes bust as soon as parking is removed. I mean, I don't know about you, but I've even heard irate shop owners claim that just talking about reduced parking, or – dare I even say it out loud – increased parking rates (cue: gasps, guffaws) , can devastate a business district, and surely sink one that is struggling in these "difficult economic times." We've all heard it time and again; and therefore, everybody knows that the key to good small business downtown is gargantuan gobs of (preferably free) parking. But, some of us still get a kick out of questioning authority; so I'll ask you, is it true? Read more: The One About the Parking-Pinched Merchant… | Planetizen

From The Atlantic Cities — Cars and Robust Cities Are Fundamentally Incompatible

Parking disrupts the urban fabric in places like Hartford

where it occupies more than 20 percent of downtown land.

Big roads and parking garages are so common in American cities that it's easy to forget these places once functioned exceptionally well without them. However, in their persistent battle to satisfy the demands of motorists, many urban areas are losing out.

In the early 1960s – when highway construction was at its peak and cars were just beginning to leave their mark – a handful of critics predicted there would be irreconcilable tensions between vibrant cities and their motorized inhabitants. Nearly 50 years later, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania published research validating this idea.

Read more: Cars and Robust Cities Are Fundamentally Incompatible - Commute - The Atlantic Cities

From StreetFilms.org — The High Cost of Free Parking

In some city neighborhoods, cruising [in search of a parking spot] makes up as much as 40 percent of all traffic. All this unnecessary traffic slows down buses, endangers cyclists and pedestrians, delays other motorists, and produces harmful emissions. The key to eliminating it is to get the price of parking right... says UCLA Urban Planning Prof Donald Shoup. Part of StreetFilms.org series Moving Beyond the Automobile
 
MBA: The Right Price for Parking from Streetfilms on Vimeo.