Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees • Hacker News Board

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#311

Post by Moldoteck » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 2:45 PM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #265

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 lot requirements make sense in areas where cars are the only viable means of transportation. Removing those requirements only makes sense when other forms of transportation are provided to reduce the number of cars required to get people to the places of business. Near me, the city is talking about removing a big parking lot and strip mall and turning it into a mixed use space, but as far as I’ve read there h…

requirements don't make sense, numbers are pulled from thin air in the regulations so even in this case requirements should be elliminated

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#312

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 2:47 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #264

bsder wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not always ass-backward. People forget that one of the reasons why the malls became so popular and helped collapse the old downtowns was, you guessed it, lack of free parking . With malls, you could come into a boundary and spend a significant amount of time in a walkable arena with lots of different stores. You knew there would always be parking except possibly at Christmas. Downtown? Not so much. And you proba…

> Which seemingly, would have prevented the malls from collapsing. I don't think nearby residence areas would have prevented malls from collapsing. Online shopping made them largely obsolete as a place to actually shop , with many going bankrupt and others hanging on by a thread. Then a global pandemic cut some of the remaining threads.

This is a common narrative, but malls are overall doing just fine. A few are failing all the time - enough that you can cherry pick many examples to make it appear the case. Most failing malls though are close to some other mall that is doing okay - or in some cases both malls are doing bad as there never was a reason for the second to be built.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#313

Post by Moldoteck » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 2:47 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #140

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…

I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience. What does hyper dense mean? And how is that detrimental? Tokyo meets all of your requirements, for example, but you would c…

maybe they talk about russian style hyper dense blocks but with 0 infra that looks like hell...

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#314

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 2:59 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #164

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…

I'm so torn as to what I want my future living situation to be. I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Maryland, spent a little time in my 20s in the denser-than-suburbs suburbia of the Bay Area, and then the past 14 years in San Francisco proper. More recently I've been spending 1-1.5 months at a time living out in "rural" parts of Truckee, CA. I just don't know anymore. In San Francisco I live within a few minu…

Where you live is a compromise. If we had Star Trek style teleportation I might be interested in living on the moon, or Mars. Like you I find that friends (and family!) are the biggest reason to not move - I can make new friends but it is hard.

There are advantage and disadvantages to living everywhere in the world. You soon learn to enjoy the things that are possible where you are and not get into the things difficult/impossible.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#315

Post by Moldoteck » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 2:59 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #300

PeterisP wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a walkable city you go by a store every time you go outside - you come back from work, you pass by a store or two where you can buy fresh groceries. This has also an impact on healthy diet, giving access to fresh goods which wouldn't possibly last a month and thus wouldn't get eaten if people drive shopping every few weeks.

Yes, I could, but I don't want to. Go to store, walk around, wait in line, for what.. 1eur worth of milk? Plus you buy a bunch of other stuff that you don't need, because "it's there". I just make a list, go to the store once, fill up on 100, 150eur of stuff, and I'm done for a week or two. Stores are horrible, people are slow, they 'park' their carts in the middle of the aisle, so you have to bump into them to pass,…

in this case maybe amsterdam style will suit better your usecase? you take a 5-10 min electric bike(maybe even cargo type) trip to a discount store, you put everything in bags/cargo space and return home. Or Swiss style: discount stores usually are placed close to trams, you buy your stuff and just take a tram to your home(and since usually those have ded lanes, it's damn fast). You may be concerned about capacity(maybe you don't like to carry two big bags) - you can take a foldable luggage cart. Ofc you can also order a taxi and since you live not too far, price isn't that big if you do this once a week. You can also use your car, but with all added costs/time spent for some ppl it's not worth it. There are also services that just bring to you what you order from these big stores. There's one more thing: you could combine the two store types: daily shopping for some small stuff in nearby store could offset the need to go to a bigger store by one week

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#316

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 3:08 PM UTC

jhbadger wrote: post #298

sebastos wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans on hackernews have never been outside of the US? That strikes me as a near impossibility. Evidence?

There are only 160 million US passports in circulation (out of a population of 330 million. So roughly half. Of course HN people tend to be middle class or higher so they'd more likely be in that 50%. But still, the US is huge (roughly the size of Europe (Europe is approximately 10,180,000 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km). There's plenty of places to go in the US without needing to go else…

Until about 20 years ago you didn't need a passport to travel to Mexico or Canada. And passports only last 10 years so it is possible some have traveled outside the US in the past, but no longer have a passport.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#317

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 3:09 PM UTC

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #241

SoftTalker wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars aren't that loud. Trucks, buses, and trains are loud, and that is what you have a lot of in urban areas.

Unless they're made badly, trains are very quiet! They sneak up on you. Cars, trucks, motorbikes, and construction sites are loud.

Diesel trains are loud and shake the ground. electric trains are quiet and can sneak up on you.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#318

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 3:15 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #235

coldpie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do you get from a non-walkable city to a walkable city? We can't remove parking minimums because everyone needs a car because it's not walkable. But we can't take out the parking lots, because no one walks, because there's too many parking lots between the places people want to go. And we can't put in dedicated bus lanes, because that would reduce parking, which we need because buses are too slow. How do we br…

You can slowly, gradually reduce parking minimums.

It doesn't need to be slow. Private developers are not stupid - they know when their customers arrive by car and thus demand parking so they have incentive to figure out how much parking they need. As people switch to other modes of arriving they will decide that the parking isn't needed and eventually worth tearing up for something else. (but this assumes you provide those other options - if transit remains terrible people will drive and need the parking)

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#319

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 3:18 PM UTC

jmward01 wrote: post #223

jimberlage wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve lived in areas with this parking problem in multiple cities for over a decade now. I can confidently say, I don’t care about this problem at all. Parking further up the street from my house is a small, small, small price to pay for the benefits of being walking distance from interesting things.

Exactly. Pretty much every argument I see against removing parking boils down to 'The city gets denser with more nice things to the point I can't drive my SUV there any more!' A lack of parking is a symptom of a thriving location, not a problem. A real solution is more transit and more transit oriented development. Removing parking is a start through.

> A lack of parking is a symptom of a thriving location, not a problem.

This is false. I've seen many downtowns that are not thriving and lack parking. They do okay for the midday luck crowd, but they are empty by 6pm as everyone has gone to the suburbs.

Lack of parking is a feature of thriving locations as well, but it isn't an indicator.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#320

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 3:26 PM UTC

NoPedantsThanks wrote: post #202

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…

The problem is that the removal of parking requirements typically doesn't address the parking-lot scenario depicted here. It's often a developer handout that results in a degraded standard of living for existing residents in the neighborhood around a new development. Let's say a developer builds a bigger, taller building than what was there previously and adds residents. If they're not required to include sufficient…

A few developers will do that. However people who need to drive will soon catch on that parking is hard in those buildings and so they will go elsewhere. This is a self correcting problem if you let it run its course.