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Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

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Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#111

Post by uoaei »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #107
sfpotter wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating I-5 was really contentious at the time. It destroyed neighborhoods. My family has lived in the area for several generations and my parents can attest to this. Lidding it would be great, but removing it would be better. There are loads of people who live in the suburbs north and south of Seattle and expect to be able to drive 20-30 miles each way day-in-day-out to commute. If the city continues to grow, this…

The only thing worse than having I5 is not having I5. There really isn't enough north-south corridors to replace it (15th, 99, east/west lake...really that's it), given that I5 is close to the water and a huge hill as it comes in across from UW. It is already non-viable to expect a 20-30 minute commute into the city. We saw what happened when the Palestine supporters blocked off I5 a few weeks ago...on a weekend with…

Can you articulate a cogent reason why people need to cross the city on such a thoroughfare just to live their lives?

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#112

Post by bluGill »

tomcar288 wrote: post #105
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…

you don't necessarily need to urbanize. just make things more walkable. Instead of having 1 large library or grocery store the size of a theme park, have 10 smaller ones in walking distance instead.

I prefer the metric is an 8 year old should be able to get to the library alone. I don't are if they take the bus, walk, or ride a bike - but they need to be able to get there alone. This is a proxy for safety of various transport modes, available routes, and community attitude toward kids being out alone.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#113

Post by coldpie »

mb7733 wrote: post #98
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. I'm afraid that this would wind up like Vancouver, which lacks freeways through the city and has pretty bad traffic as a result. Better maybe to tunnel it under if possible? That works well for Seattle, although we still have I5 to contend with that divides the downtown from Capitol Hill (there is talk of lidding the entire…

Honestly, having lived in Vancouver as well as many cities that _do_ have highways running right through town, I didn't miss that in Vancouver at all. Traffic will suck both ways, and at least Vancouver avoids having ugly, loud highways along its waterfront and through most of its downtown. Definitely, the best case for cars is to have fast highways that bypass the city, but there isn't a lot of room with that given…

Gotcha covered here in the twin cities -- we already have north and south bypasses in I-494 and I-694. Now we have an opportunity to get I-94 out of the middle of the metro.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#114

Post by bloopernova »

adregan wrote: post #101
bloopernova wrote: post #28

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?

Speaking of brownfield, you may (more likely not) be surprised to know that golf courses are pretty nasty places themselves. You can find soils contaminated with arsenic, mercury, and cadmium from fungicides. So those rolling green links might not be the cheapest places to establish new housing when you include the remediation.

Oof, that's pretty bad. I did not know that. Do you happen to know if forests would help clean that soil?

Feels kind of appropriate if you could grow forest on a site for 50 to 100 years or more. Then harvest the wood with all the nasty stuff in it. Then bury all that contaminated wood somewhere deep. Then build houses on the newly clean earth.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#115

Post by bluGill »

mattmcknight wrote: post #104

I find this sort of logic absurd. “There are at least four parking spaces for every car, meaning that the parking stock is no more than 25 percent full at any given time. And some of those cars are moving at any given time" So, if I have a two car garage in my house, a parking spot at work, and a parking spot at the local shopping district, how else is this going to work? I can't bring my parking spot with me. The id…

You don't have a parking spot at the local parking district. You share your spot with everyone else there. Sure you have one at home and one at work, but everything else is shared with people who use your spot when you are not there.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#116

Post by avisser »

coldpie wrote: post #47
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…

> having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. We're at a critical juncture here in the Twin Cities. The state DOT needs to re-build the interstate that cuts right through the entire metro area (I-94) for the first time since it was first built 50 years ago. There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and re…

I-81 through Syracuse NY is being torn down. There is already a bypass, I-481 that loops around the city to the East to connect with I-90.

Very similar story - the highway divides Syracuse University from the poor Black neighborhoods. It's a scar through the middle of town.

I'm very excited to see how the city heals around it.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#117

Post by bluGill »

e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #67

I'd even go a step further and set a maximum amount of parking in a given area to disincentivize driving. As an extreme example, if a mall is only allowed to have 5 parking spaces then they'll need to design around supporting public transit. So many places in the US are almost impossible to live in without owning a car - you might have bike paths if you're lucky, and in many places there aren't even sidewalks

The problem is either you cannot get the number perfect and so you must make it too large thus doing nothing over not setting a limit at all. If the number is too low you will discover next election people who think they need to park (they may or may not be right) are mad enough to vote you out and undo things. By just not setting a limit you let every property owner decide for themselves what is right - and if they discover they are too low they can hire someone to build more parking (at their expense), while if they decide they have too many they can replace parking with something else - like another building.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#118

Post by bluGill »

mkaic wrote: post #100
rtkwe wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an ideal state but is a real chicken and egg problem, the same problem that's soft locked US cities as car centric as they are, you can't mandate away car reliance without the public transit to back it up and transit will have low ridership if it's even slightly less convenient than driving.

I think underground metros, while expensive to build, solve this, because they are always more convenient compared to any traffic-ridden area. A bus can get stuck in the same traffic as the cars, and bikes taking over any significant portion of American commuting in the near-term feels laughable to me — we are quite culturally different from the Dutch :P

Don't forget that metros can also go on elevate viaducts for much less money. Underground is the best solution for dense areas, but the elevated is enough cheaper that you can afford to run a metro a long way out into the suburbs - then those become prime real estate to rebuild to mid rises making the entire city denser (assuming zoning allows this)

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#119

Post by ajsnigrutin »

e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #67

I'd even go a step further and set a maximum amount of parking in a given area to disincentivize driving. As an extreme example, if a mall is only allowed to have 5 parking spaces then they'll need to design around supporting public transit. So many places in the US are almost impossible to live in without owning a car - you might have bike paths if you're lucky, and in many places there aren't even sidewalks

Shopping centers are a bad example for this, because if you buy stuff, you somehow have to take it home, and carrying a carton of 12 liters of milk, 2 10-packs of toilet paper, a bag of frozen stuff and shower curtain rod, all of that in your hands on a bus, is well.. a pain.

Also, at least over here, most shopping centers have underground parking.

The "historic city center" and all that crap... that I understand... noone goes there for weekly shopping, but instead people go there to hang out, drink coffee, eat, etc.... public transport works great for that. Malls, shopping centers or even larger stores? Nope.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#120

Post by bluGill »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #6

They (ought to) unpave the parking lot and put up a paradise! More green spaces are good for cities.

Not really. Some parks/green areas are good. However it is easy to put in more than are needed and make the city less dense which is not good for the city or your ability to do some of the things that make a city great.
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