The force that shapes everything around us: Parking • Hacker News Board

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#231

Post by geraldwhen » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 8:25 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #173

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s mostly because of zoning. If you separate retail from offices from housing, you force people to have cars to get around. Which then requires large parking lots and wide roads to deal with all the cars, in a big feedback loop. Those who can’t drive (about a third of the population are too young, too old, or disabled) are just forced to make do. Not to mention how difficult it is for the poor. Owning a car is real…

You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once people start forming families, "live next to work" is likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside whether or not most people would want to move anytime that happened, there's no longer a single answer. Start throwing kids in the mix and it gets eve…

I know multiple people who bought houses 45 minutes from work that made way, way more money than needed for those houses.

They WANTED to be in the middle of nowhere. They could have had a house 11 minutes away with good schools and access to nature, but they choose 45 to be isolated. They live in their cars.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#232

Post by lazyasciiart » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 8:27 PM UTC

geraldwhen wrote: post #231

majormajor wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once people start forming families, "live next to work" is likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside whether or not most people would want to move anytime that happened, there's no longer a single answer. Start throwing kids in the mix and it gets eve…

I know multiple people who bought houses 45 minutes from work that made way, way more money than needed for those houses. They WANTED to be in the middle of nowhere. They could have had a house 11 minutes away with good schools and access to nature, but they choose 45 to be isolated. They live in their cars.

That's what congestion charges at city limits are for.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#233

Post by majormajor » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 8:29 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #178

majormajor wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once people start forming families, "live next to work" is likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside whether or not most people would want to move anytime that happened, there's no longer a single answer. Start throwing kids in the mix and it gets eve…

> incredibly expensive proposition for many cities I lived in Italy for a number of years. It is a poorer country than the United States in a lot of ways, and yet they manage this quite well. It still comes back to zoning and parking: by allowing denser development, you can plan transit routes that serve a lot more people, some of whom don't even own an automobile.

The largest cities in Italy are quite a bit smaller than the largest cities in the US, so it's a very different situation.

Rome's metro area is about 4.3 million people. San Antonio's is about 2.6 million. San Antonio also has far more relaxed car-based commutes than the Bay Area or LA as a result.

If you dropped Rome's three subway lines in San Antonio you wouldn't get rid of that many car trips, especially since the city being smaller and less dense than the really big cities in the US makes the car trips that much easier in the first place.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#234

Post by lazyasciiart » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 8:29 PM UTC

AlanSE wrote: post #186

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s mostly because of zoning. If you separate retail from offices from housing, you force people to have cars to get around. Which then requires large parking lots and wide roads to deal with all the cars, in a big feedback loop. Those who can’t drive (about a third of the population are too young, too old, or disabled) are just forced to make do. Not to mention how difficult it is for the poor. Owning a car is real…

I hope/believe that we are near a tipping point. There is a very large and very substantial neighborhood premium based on what's around it, but the zoning is the same everywhere so the competition was legally restricted to greenways, sidewalks, parks, and HOA facilities. Even in the suburban US, it is a VERY desirable feature to be within walking distance of a park where young children can play. This has created a st…

Riding bikes on the road, even in the US, is mostly for the poorest workers. It is most visibly for the committed exercise or competitive cyclists, and it is vanishingly infrequently but looms large in the public imagination for the "true anti-car zealots".

https://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-hipsters-o...

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#235

Post by lazyasciiart » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 8:30 PM UTC

iso1631 wrote: post #202

davidw wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think many people are truly anti-car activists. Just that we need to redimension their absolute centrality to so many policies and budgets. I'm involved in pro-housing politics and it's just amazing how many people are like "well, ok, sure, people need a place to live and all, but let's think FIRST about where to store the automobiles. If that works out, then I guess we can build some housing". They don't say…

In the UK we build houses without enough parking and the whole area becomes horrendous. The idea I get from reading about US "pro housing" people is that if you don't provide parking, people will still have a car and still park. In reality in the UK every patch of open space, including pavements (sidewalks) become car storage facilities. housing estates with 4 bed houses with just 1 car parking space (plus a garage w…

In the US they become places to live in a tent until the police destroy your tent and you live in a similar spot on the pavement two blocks away without a tent.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#236

Post by mock-possum » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 8:31 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #106

elijaht wrote: post #51

I live car-free in NYC. A large appeal of NYC to me was not having to park. I don't ~mind~ driving, but I absolutely hated having to deal with finding parking when I lived in other cities. Parking generally makes me feel stressed (competition for free spots), or makes me pay (using something like SpotHero makes it easy to find a spot, but costs me). It's not even just major cities either- I'm frequently in a college…

Sold my car years ago and moved to Boston. I'll never go back to live anywhere that requires me to own a car. I bike or walk everywhere, and what makes me hopeful is that biking infrastructure in Boston (and neighboring cities like Cambridge) has improved dramatically in the years since I've been here and just keeps getting better. Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in the US was $10,728 in 2022. B…

ten thousand dollars???

Look I get that I probably don’t do cars the way other people do cars, but like - ten thousand a year? I spend maybe $800 on gas in a year. What are these people doing? Buying a new set of tires every Christmas? Yearly visits to a detailing shop or something??

I mean like no offense but if you guys were spending twenty thousand dollars annually on cars… that’s on you. You don’t need to live that way. I bought my Subaru used ten years ago for $3k, and I’ve managed just fine without spend a small fortune on… whataver it is you were spending yours on.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#237

Post by sime2009 » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 8:31 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #212

Parking is impactful but is ultimately shaped by human preferences that are revealed by the choices people make. For example, you can live in NYC car-free, but many (most?) people move out to the burbs once they have a family, partially because lower density + car enables better family life. What works well for a single-and-dating young professional, doesn't work as well for a dad. If ample parking makes family life…

How many other options are available to people in between the suburbs and NYC style high density cities?

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#238

Post by lippihom » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 8:32 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #147

I lived for a few years a 5 minute walk from downtown Palo Alto. I still used my car, but significantly less. I can't tell you how wonderful it was to walk, instead of drive, for a random trip to a restaurant. It was even better when going to the bar. I think if we also focused on walkability for residential development, we could cut down on car use. Even though I now live in suburbia, I made sure there were a few pl…

Imagine how nice it was during Covid when all of University Avenue was closed off to cars! They've reversed all of that now... such a shame.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#239

Post by lazyasciiart » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 8:33 PM UTC

doctorpangloss wrote: post #204

nharada wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious how much bigger the real stadium parking was. SimCity: https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/simcity/e/... Real Stadium: https://i.imgur.com/KwT1T53.png

It's not saying much that stadiums are weird in a way that games don't model (edited). A stadium's audience loves to drive to places, that's the purpose of the destination, to watch a thing then eat garlic fries and drink and drive home, so whatever. I like the author's politics and agree with her sentiments. But if the author of this thing thinks she can run a business on Main Street without parking, by all means, s…

> It's not saying much that stadiums have very favorable land prices, which aren't modeled in the games.

But that's not even true, much like your assertion that businesses are kept afloat by customers who drive to them.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#240

Post by astrodust » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 8:34 PM UTC

david2ndaccount wrote: post #132

Cockbrand wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this make me appreciate living in a city that has a pretty comprehensive public transport coverage, and where bicycling is at least tolerable. The city you describe seems to be only usable by car.

Many cities in the US are only usable by car. You can’t just leap from a car-based city to a non-car-based city, you have to provide transitionary options (also even car-optional cities still have parking garages).

Somehow many cities took the leap from extremely pedestrian friendly in 1900 to completely car based, so "you can't just" is clearly not true. It just takes a lot of willpower, or in the case of cars, tons of lobbying.