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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

#71

Post by hobs »

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 live in the twin cities and I had no idea that was even on anyone's mind, I love the idea.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#72

Post by HEmanZ »

stronglikedan wrote: post #31
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 US is urbanized...if you want it. There are plenty of places where people that enjoy living in urban areas can do so. However, to me, that sounds like an unenjoyable hellscape. Been there, done that. The beauty of the US is that people have choices, and aren't pigeonholed into someone else's idea of "enjoyable".

Do you have experience living in any variety of urban areas in first world countries outside of the US? Have you been to many cities in the US? I don’t think you can possibly have done either of these and still think the US has any urbanism. And literally all most moderate urbanists ask for is “please lower regulations so that the free market can build what some of us want and I can actually have a choice.”

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#73

Post by tamimio »

Before attacking the parking lots, fix the return to office mandates, the public transportation, downtown concepts, and physically collocated XY (shops or other) and the parking lot issue will solve itself, going after the symptoms without fixing the root cause is just moronic nonsense that will lead to at least “other” parking lots increasing their prices.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#74

Post by coldpie »

hobs wrote: post #71
coldpie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 live in the twin cities and I had no idea that was even on anyone's mind, I love the idea.

Please, please (please) contact everyone you can think of to support the idea. MnDOT has contact info on the Rethinking I-94 page[1], tell your city council rep, your county commissioner, your mayor, your state legislators, the governor. Tell your friends and neighbors. It's so easy to just fall back and do the same thing we've always done; making a change is really hard and we need to show that there is support for it.

[1] https://talk.dot.state.mn.us/rethinking-i94 The official term for the proposal to remove the freeway is "at-grade alternatives".

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#75

Post by whydoyoucare »

an_ko wrote: post #48
travoc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Major European cities with no such minimum parking requirements do fine. They have public transport and bike infrastructure, so many people in dense urban areas don't need cars.

I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like ten miles each way. The point is the size of American cities is vastly different to European ones, so what works that side of Atlantic rarely translates "as-is" here.

(I am disappointed about this oft thrown around comparison, since my city reduced one lane on several major roads and created bike paths. Sadly, we now have major traffic jams and hardly any utilization of the bike path. Turns out someone on the city council wanted to turn it into Denmark)

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#76

Post by notacoward »

"I don’t know that anyone besides Grabar is even thinking about this"

A great many people are. Urbanist Xitter (Mastodon, Threads, whatever) is very much alive and well. The closest thing to a consensus about what to do with the reclaimed space is some trees, but primarily medium-density affordable housing, ideally with retail on the bottom. Sometimes the space can be used to make room for transit, too. By making these places denser and more livable, it prevents even more trees, meadows, etc. from being cleared for more exurbs.

I'd start with Suburban Nation, move on to StrongTowns and MissingMiddle, then take it from there.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#77

Post by [deleted] »

jrockway wrote: post #46
Swizec wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rules in my area are two spots per bedroom - mandatory Wait am I reading this right that a 3-bedroom family home would come with space for six cars ? How many families have 6 cars that's insane O.O Sounds like a regulation someone long ago thought would for sure prevent anyone from building anything. No way they actually wanted that much residential parking ...

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.

[deleted]

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#78

Post by eikenberry »

housebear wrote: post #70

Does anyone have an idea of what it would roughly cost to purchase an unused parking lot, tear it up, dispose of the asphalt waste, re-soil, and plant 30 or so trees? Is this something some enterprising person could start a kickstarter for just as a public experiment? Is it even possible with zoning requirements or the like?

Why tear up the asphalt? Wouldn't perforating it with bigger holes cut for the trees be a lot cheaper. Tree roots grow perfectly fine under asphalt and perforation will allow for air and water to reach the soil in a more distributed manner for better growth. Seems like it would be a much cheaper option.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#79

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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…

> 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 freeway through downtown).

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#80

Post by UtopiaPunk »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #64
UtopiaPunk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas. I was sitting in a coffee shop in a small town and I overheard a conversation next to me. Two elderly men were talking, and one of them made a comment to the effect of, "I like a rural town, so I try to vote to keep it that way." Two or three decades ago, this town really was a small farming town, but the population is growing and the town…

> I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas. It really is. Some subruban and rual places are starting to get this as well. A common theme among the ones that get it is to provide density bonuses (i.e. if you allocate large blocks of conservation space, you can build more densely). The result is that you get the same overall density in an area but the people are living much closer t…

There are some silly culture-war politics which makes reasonable discussions difficult. But also some of the politics problem is that a lot of these decisions are being made at the local town/city level. Small rural towns may try to dig in their heels and and resist urbanization (and the specific tactics involved are usually kind of bad, imo). Meanwhile, big cities often don't have strong incentives to not sprawl, at least in the US. Sprawl moves the costs of housing and transporation onto someone else (either the surrounding towns or the individuals), while the city maintains some portion of a tax base (sales tax and local businesses). Some cities have some political will to fight for these anyway, but even at the best of times, these policies have to make some harmful compromises.

I think the most promising solutions to this problem are policies from state-level governments.

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