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Parking, Off-Street
“You don’t go somewhere to park your car; you go there because you want to be there, and large parking lots in an area reduce the desire to be there.” - Donald Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking
Off-street parking is any form of car storage that is not curbside, including parking structures, surface parking lots, single-car garages and driveways. Increasingly regarded as one of the great planning disasters, off-street parking requirements help explain why Americans make nearly 90 percent of all trips by motor vehicle [1]. Because they are everywhere, free parking spaces serve as a “cheap, convenient, direct, sedentary connection to most points in the city” [1] and lead to a diminished street life. They also provide an impetus for large-scale sprawl in most areas.
How Off-Street Parking Destroys the Urban Fabric
Many older American towns and neighborhoods — those built before the automobile — are uninterrupted pedestrian zones. As historic buildings are torn down to accommodate parking spaces, the town center becomes easier to drive to but much more difficult to walk through, as parking lots create large gaps between land uses [2]. More people therefore choose to drive, requiring more parking and further degrading the town’s pedestrian qualities. Soon the area becomes a less desirable place to visit, with parking supply easily accommodating parking demand, but the special qualities and uninterrupted urban fabric that come with pedestrian orientation greatly diminished. [2] Aerial photographs of many American cities and suburbs show that parking land area is often equal to or greater than non-parking area (streets, buildings, sidewalks, parks).
Negative Effects of Off-Street Parking
- Off-street parking encourages car ownership and car use, further increasing parking demand.
- Increased traffic is a hazard for all non-driving street users.
- Parking consumes valuable land that could be used for housing units or businesses, thereby reducing the tax base.[3]
- Surface parking lots form empty spaces where no one wants to be, which reduces eyes on the street and the sense of personal safety.
- All residents, businesses and consumers must bear the costs of parking facilities (as costs bundled with rents and products), whether or not they use them.
- Parking limits pedestrian access to destinations (moreover, driveways to off-street parking cut through sidewalks and are a hazard to pedestrians).
- Car storage is an ugly and undesirable streetscape feature.
Parking Minimums
Parking requirements are very difficult to change because they are “legislated in zoning ordinances and firmly entrenched in planning practice” [1]. Most local governments require a minimum number of parking spaces, usually to satisfy peak demand, for any new residential or commercial development. Local governments pursuing a more progressive parking policy have abandoned mandatory parking minimums and instead established parking maximums that are set fairly low. An incentive to own a car, residential parking is bundled with the cost of housing so that all residents share the costs regardless of car ownership. A permit system would shift costs exclusively to vehicle owners, rather than spreading parking costs among all residents.
Some cities, including Pasadena, California, now allow developers to pay a fee in lieu of provide parking spaces required by zoning. Fee revenues are then used to fund public parking lots, which are placed strategically for the benefit of the retail area, eliminating the disruption of numerous single-use private lots at each store[4]. Reduced parking helps to preserve the urban fabric, as shoppers can park in one location and visit several stores on foot. This policy has been successfully implemented along the Lake Avenue shopping district in Pasadena, an area that attracts residents in large numbers, helping to ensure retail success.
Design Matters
Even though local governments usually require excess parking, they have generally shown little interest in parking design or aesthetics. This is unfortunate because parking now fills a significant proportion of most neighborhood vistas. As Donald Shoup points out, “we not only pay for off-street parking, but we also have to look at it” [1]. Most off-street parking results in blank walls (instead of storefronts) or empty spaces, disrupting the pedestrian realm.
In addition to reducing parking in general, local ordinances can improve the streetscape by requiring that parking be provided behind buildings rather than in streetfront lots. There are also several design guidelines that can be applied to various forms of parking [4]:
Surface parking lots. Surface lots can be dropped a few feet below street-level to make pedestrians more visible. Modest landscaping improvements, such as patterned pavers and a dense canopy of trees, can enhance parking lot appearance.
Parking structures. Parking structures are often built as cheaply as possible with little regard for architecture and design. To improve appearance, developers can design such structures to resemble office or residential buildings, or they can surround parking with retail and other buildings (though ventilation can be a challenge).
ALSO ON THE LIVABLE STREETS NETWORK
- Streetsblog: Bloomberg: Buildings Can Be Green and Full of Parking
- Streetsblog: Planners and Green Groups Call for Off-Street Parking Reform
REFERENCES
[1] Shoup, Donald C., 2005. The High Cost of Free Parking. Chicago: Planners Press. American Planning Association. 734 pp.
[2] Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck, 2000. Suburban Nation. New York: North Point Press.
[3] Parking and Better Neighborhooods: Getting It Right. San Francisco Planning Department.
[4] Mukhija, Vinit and Donald Shoup. Quantity versus quality in off-street parking requirements. Journal of the American Planning Association, v72, no. 3, pp. 296 – 308. Pdf here.
PICTURE REFERENCES
[1] concrete_jungler101 / Flickr
