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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

#371

Post by aidenn0 »

dns_snek wrote: post #282
aidenn0 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stayed in a hotel in a city recently. I wish the cars were the loudest thing. There was an ice-skating rink blasting music until after midnight and then a jackhammer at 6am. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well.

I get that, there are always going to be outliers, but "cars" are the right answer to the noise pollution question for the vast majority of the population. Construction is a valid one too, but that one is unavoidable except for all the car infrastructure.

It might be better to differentiate between chronic and acute sources of noise. Traffic contributes mostly to chronic noise.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#372

Post by Philorandroid »

fjoireoipe wrote: post #51
irusensei wrote: post #10

If it’s public properties then yes please. If private then hippity hoppity…

use eminent domain to turn it into public property? hoppity heft property is theft

"Just take it by force" isn't the rational answer you think it is

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#373

Post by alexanderchr »

nradov wrote: post #210
alexanderchr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I’ve lived it’s usually been solved by letting anyone park there for a higher fee. Residents get to park at a big discount or for free. Or you can hand out guest passes to residents.

So then the city has to issue parking passes plus guest passes, and then actually enforce them. Seems totally impractical for all but the densest cities.

Sure there's some administration but it can be mostly handled digitally nowadays. I've seen it work in many cities that are not particularly dense by European standards.

The enforcement are handled by the same people that do normal parking enforcement. They scan the plates, see if there's a valid permit/ticket and write a ticket otherwise.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#374

Post by jrockway »

jjav wrote: post #256
jrockway wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's a good one-size-fits-all rule. A 3 bedroom unit could be 3 couples living together and splitting the rent, or it could be 1 family, or it could just be 1 person who wants an office and a gym. The rule should probably be "1 space for car owned", like when you go to buy a car, you have to prove that you have a place to park it.

> The rule should probably be "1 space for car owned", like when you go to buy a car, you have to prove that you have a place to park it. That doesn't provide any guidance to the builder though, so what should they build?

I mean, typically laws do not substitute for the creative process of designing and marketing buildings. What color should the walls be? What kind of kitchen faucet should you have? What should the countertops be made out of? What flooring surface will you use? There is no reason that "how many parking spaces should we build" be the 1 question that the government answers for you. Make an educated guess. If you're wrong and build too many, you leave money on the table. If you build too few, then people will buy some other unit with more parking.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#375

Post by neilkk »

tekknik wrote: post #358
neilkk wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The youngest person who was able to drive when gas was a quarter dollar a gallon is now in their early nineties.

Absolutely not, I’m at least 1/2 that age and remember has being $0.35/gal around when I started driving.

There are 100 cents in a dollar fyi.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#376

Post by lotsoweiners »

dns_snek wrote: post #282
aidenn0 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stayed in a hotel in a city recently. I wish the cars were the loudest thing. There was an ice-skating rink blasting music until after midnight and then a jackhammer at 6am. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well.

I get that, there are always going to be outliers, but "cars" are the right answer to the noise pollution question for the vast majority of the population. Construction is a valid one too, but that one is unavoidable except for all the car infrastructure.

Maybe for you but I’ve stayed in plenty of extremely urban areas in the US and abroad. The traffic noise was at worst a light background noise, white noise if you will.

The noises that bothered me were the live music from downstairs blasting into my room after midnight, people making a ruckus in the halls outside my room, people yelling on the street, loud emergency services vehicles.

Just like in an airplane it isn’t the sound of the aircraft that is annoying to me but the guy two rows in front talking to his bros.

The nice thing is I live in the suburbs and don’t hear any of the above and I also don’t hear traffic noise. The worst I hear is an occasional landscaping crew or circular saw but those don’t happen at 1 am.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#377

Post by jjav »

jrockway wrote: post #374
jjav wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rule should probably be "1 space for car owned", like when you go to buy a car, you have to prove that you have a place to park it. That doesn't provide any guidance to the builder though, so what should they build?

I mean, typically laws do not substitute for the creative process of designing and marketing buildings. What color should the walls be? What kind of kitchen faucet should you have? What should the countertops be made out of? What flooring surface will you use? There is no reason that "how many parking spaces should we build" be the 1 question that the government answers for you. Make an educated guess. If you're wron…

> What color should the walls be? What kind of kitchen faucet should you have? What should the countertops be made out of? What flooring surface will you use?

All of these can very easily be changed by future buyers if they prefer something different.

But if the developers builds a 50 unit apartment building with just 4 parking spots, that building is now there for many generations and there is no practical way to change that decision.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#378

Post by earthling8118 »

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…

The parking lot requirements are a large part of what makes cars the only viable transport option in an area. They do need to go. And yes, other means of transport need to be provided.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#379

Post by earthling8118 »

shiroiuma wrote: post #209
ses1984 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is in america if you want to bike that far, you probably have to take some route designed for cars. It’s very stressful and in many cases very risky. Local climate is a problem, too. It’s not fun to bike to work some days when it’s very hot and humid, and then in the other half of the year, deal with freezing rain.

This is a valid comment. Many times, when the US makes "cycling infrastructure" (scare-quotes intended), it's just awful: painted lines on a busy, dangerous road, or at best a path immediately parallel to such a monstrosity. Little wonder people don't want to ride a bike next to a bunch of giant SUVs speeding at 75mph. And it is true the weather in many US cities tends to be less mild than in Amsterdam, but that can…

I am vehemently on the side against cars, but I will wholeheartedly refute that our summer weather can be worked around with clothing. It's far too hot and humid for that to do anything.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#380

Post by earthling8118 »

tekknik wrote: post #369
erikaww wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you got it backwards. Cities now only build these subury sfh highway parking lot hellscapes and ban anything remotely dense So everyone is pigeonholed into something you want

density can be hugely detrimental to climate change if the city isn’t built in a green way, which no US city currently is and will likely not be in your lifetime. under the guise that your desire to live in a highly dense climate wasteland, by 2035 we should require either everybody move away from city centers, or require cities be zero emission. your decisions are affecting me, isn’t that the norm now?

If we can't make the more efficient cities sustainable, why in the world would it be possible to do the same thing with everyone spread out?
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