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The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

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Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is the correct approach. It is somewhat a zero-sum game at least in urban centers. Driving is cheap because free and cheap parking is widely available, and car speed is prioritized over other factors including pedestrian safety. Some of the huge volume of parking has to be given over to other transit modes, which will increase demand and eventually price for what remains. Urban speed limits need to be lower, p…

> It is somewhat a zero-sum game at least in urban centers. Driving is cheap because free and cheap parking is widely available, and car speed is prioritized over other factors including pedestrian safety. I've never seen an urban center where "free and cheap parking is widely available", or one with a speed limit above 25.

I've been to NYC where free and cheap parking is on nearly every major and minor street. I would consider it widely available. Yes, trying to find a parking spot is a nightmare but that doesn't mean it isn't widely available generally.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#82

There's an interesting interview with a designer of SimCity, where he discusses parking: Geoff Manaugh: While you were making those measurements of different real-world cities, did you discover any surprising patterns or spatial relationships Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was bl…

It's a pity that they didn't bake in the option to turn on realistic parking lots and road sizes for the required capacity. It does have traffic jams and more roads can help, especially since the player can control induced demand far more than in reality, but allowing the player to switch between both what's a fun game and what's a realistic simulation could have gone a long way to inform a good chunk of the populati…

I haven't looked at 'cities: skylines' or if there is a sequel... recently. I'm wondering if they finally did start modeling parking.

I think 'realistic parking' should probably be an option, like you said some people want the 'classic' sim-city experience and modeling. I'd hate to drive those people away from the 'cities' series, as it just seems to be sim-city without the EA enshittification.

I think it could be really interesting to allow users to try to build less car focused cities within the game. To simulate concepts like Barcelona's 'superblocks', to plan bikelanes or golfcart-focused communities like 'the villages'.

Generally the devs of 'cities' seem like they are interested in many concepts (there are sooooo many dlc for skylines) .. hopefully this one bubbles up.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#83
post #13

Seems like parking is a side effect for people's preference for larger houses and yards. Convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors, and the parking situation would change dramatically.

> share walls with their neighbors I honestly don't know why anyone would ever want to do that. To me, it's only done out of necessity, and is a driving force in motivating people to get the hell out of that situation asap. But the cool thing is, some people can choose that, if that's what they desire, even though I can't understand why.

I chose to buy my first house in a townhome complex with 100 units.

Why?

Maintenance was outsourced, and at a lower price than I could pay for myself (100 households at once get a good group buy price!)

Everything on the exterior of my house was taken care of.

The complex has 2 shared green spaces, one for dogs, one for people. The large green space for people is bigger than the yard in my current single family home. All year round weatherproof commercial yard furniture was already on the property.

Every year my windows got cleaned, the deck power washed. Landscaping was professionally handled, trees trimmed, pests removed, all w/o me having to worry about any of it.

I'd buy another unit in complex with that design again w/o issue or hesitation.

With proper construction techniques (which sadly that complex didn't have), sound is not an issue. Sound dampening is a solved problem, and I've lived in other complexes that had the same sound leakage from connected neighbors and I have from my neighbors right now in the house on the lots around me.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#84
post #13

Seems like parking is a side effect for people's preference for larger houses and yards. Convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors, and the parking situation would change dramatically.

> Convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors, and the parking situation would change dramatically. Completely unnecessary. Want a front yard, back yard, and garage (attached to a laneway)? Plenty of that was build pre-WW2: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=1m8s The Oh the Urbanity channel has a video on the (mistaken) i…

The GP said "convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls", you retort back "completely unnecessary". Your first two examples are...smaller houses and shared walls.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#85
post #13

Seems like parking is a side effect for people's preference for larger houses and yards. Convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors, and the parking situation would change dramatically.

How would you propose convincing people to live four inches from their neighbor? This seems like somewhat of a challenging sale. I cannot speak for everyone, but I have lived this way and it is not good.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is the correct approach. It is somewhat a zero-sum game at least in urban centers. Driving is cheap because free and cheap parking is widely available, and car speed is prioritized over other factors including pedestrian safety. Some of the huge volume of parking has to be given over to other transit modes, which will increase demand and eventually price for what remains. Urban speed limits need to be lower, p…

And even when cities invest in non-car transit, cars will still steal those resources. It's not uncommon in my city to see cars idling on bus lanes, or gig delivery workers parking in protected bike lines inside the bollards .

Yeah where I am there is little and half-assed bike infrastructure. Cyclists facetiously and bitterly call the bike lanes "uber lanes." They are simply painted and unbuffered, unenforced. Extra parking in residential areas and loading, ride share, and delivery space everywhere else. Cyclists ride in the lane or not at all, and then are blamed for being there when we're injured or killed in traffic.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#87
post #13

Seems like parking is a side effect for people's preference for larger houses and yards. Convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors, and the parking situation would change dramatically.

It's possible to have complete, walkable communities where most people live in single family homes - streetcar suburbs. It's also possible to have totally unwalkable multifamily housing - very common in some postwar sprawls to build a subdivision off an arterial and fill it with townhouses or condos. These can even look like good urbanism in carefully framed photos. It's only when you zoom out that you realize it's just the townhouses surrounded by "open space" and fast roads.

The issue with suburbia is the framework, much more than the housing types. The battle over housing types is more about within existing city grid systems, doing some piecemeal replacements of single-family houses to duplexes, triplexes, and apartment buildings. Suburbia produces multifamily housing easily enough - not that much objection to new condo/townhouse subdivisions. We just don't celebrate that much, because they are still ultimately subdivisions.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pity that they didn't bake in the option to turn on realistic parking lots and road sizes for the required capacity. It does have traffic jams and more roads can help, especially since the player can control induced demand far more than in reality, but allowing the player to switch between both what's a fun game and what's a realistic simulation could have gone a long way to inform a good chunk of the populati…

I haven't looked at 'cities: skylines' or if there is a sequel... recently. I'm wondering if they finally did start modeling parking. I think 'realistic parking' should probably be an option, like you said some people want the 'classic' sim-city experience and modeling. I'd hate to drive those people away from the 'cities' series, as it just seems to be sim-city without the EA enshittification. I think it could be re…

Cities Skylines 2 is in the release press window, they have announced that parking and commutes will be modeled. So CS2 will be much more parking heavy, and should hopefully show just how terrible cars are in cities compared to literally any other transport mode.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pity that they didn't bake in the option to turn on realistic parking lots and road sizes for the required capacity. It does have traffic jams and more roads can help, especially since the player can control induced demand far more than in reality, but allowing the player to switch between both what's a fun game and what's a realistic simulation could have gone a long way to inform a good chunk of the populati…

I haven't looked at 'cities: skylines' or if there is a sequel... recently. I'm wondering if they finally did start modeling parking. I think 'realistic parking' should probably be an option, like you said some people want the 'classic' sim-city experience and modeling. I'd hate to drive those people away from the 'cities' series, as it just seems to be sim-city without the EA enshittification. I think it could be re…

There is a mod for the current version of cities that does model it. You have to make sure you have enough parking or your buildings will go empty.

There is a also a DLC addon where you can have walkable cities. It is pretty tricky to get just right.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#90
post #13

Seems like parking is a side effect for people's preference for larger houses and yards. Convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors, and the parking situation would change dramatically.

How would you propose convincing people to live four inches from their neighbor? This seems like somewhat of a challenging sale. I cannot speak for everyone, but I have lived this way and it is not good.

Put the well paying jobs in the city? Money tends to be pretty persuasive
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