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Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

danrodricks.com

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Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#21

Post by brewdad »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #12
falcolas wrote: post #3

I'd rather they put in an indigenous meadow. Trees are awesome, but so are open green spaces that maintain themselves.

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 E…

Most surface lots you see in a city are placeholders until the owner finds a project that pencils out. Why not charge people to park there until you are ready to build that new highrise?

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#22

Post by travoc »

wtp1saac wrote: post #4

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 h…

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.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#23

Post by epistasis »

lgleason wrote: post #14

I like cars and spend a decent amount of time keeping my cars looking pristine. I personally prefer having more than enough parking rather than just enough. Most of the efforts to improve walkability makes it impossible to find parking when you are driving in and forces you to park in dense areas where you either have to pay a fortune to park or park in dense areas where your car is likely to get dinged by some jerk…

99% of development over the past half century has been focused on making it optimal for driving, at the expense of the ~20% of people that can not even drive. And this wasn't because the market decided to do that, it's all been mandated by law.

I think it's good to have a diversity of types of development. Just as people who don't want to drive shouldn't expect access to car-dependent environments to be easy, people in cars shouldn't expect the very few pockets of hard-won walkable environments to be optimal for driving into.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#24

Post by cassepipe »

lgleason wrote: post #14

I like cars and spend a decent amount of time keeping my cars looking pristine. I personally prefer having more than enough parking rather than just enough. Most of the efforts to improve walkability makes it impossible to find parking when you are driving in and forces you to park in dense areas where you either have to pay a fortune to park or park in dense areas where your car is likely to get dinged by some jerk…

I get that you like your way of life (and that you are probably not given credible alternatives in your city) but please do consider the environmental and social costs of such a way of life: A car centric life is not sustainable for the planet.

You've probably seen that propaganda around here but in case you missed it, here is some documentation : https://www.strongtowns.org/

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#25

Post by xnx »

Much easier to let farmland go wild than tear up parking lots and destroy any chance of recouping the embodied energy of asphalt for something useful. Most farmland is in support of animal agriculture (boooo) and wouldn't make economic sense if farms had to pay municipal rates for the water they use.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#26

Post by J_Shelby_J »

wtp1saac wrote: post #4

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 h…

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.

D magazine even used a picture of my garage in their article: https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/12/the-city-of-da...

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#27

Post by xnx »

travoc wrote: post #22
wtp1saac wrote: post #4

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 h…

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.

The market is better at solving this problem than central planning.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#28

Post by bloopernova »

Can we do the same with golf courses?

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?

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#30

Post by underlipton »

lgleason wrote: post #14

I like cars and spend a decent amount of time keeping my cars looking pristine. I personally prefer having more than enough parking rather than just enough. Most of the efforts to improve walkability makes it impossible to find parking when you are driving in and forces you to park in dense areas where you either have to pay a fortune to park or park in dense areas where your car is likely to get dinged by some jerk…

Good. America has over-invested in cars and car infrastructure, to the detriment of many other more deserving investments. We're upside down on our priorities when it costs a few bucks to park on land worth a few million dollars and when skilled laborers are living off of insurance payouts to fix superficial dings and dents (instead of, say, fixing failing bridges).
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