this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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Solarpunk Urbanism
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A community to discuss solarpunk and other new and alternative urbanisms that seek to break away from our currently ecologically destructive urbanisms.
- Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City — In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.
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Or maybe people need those parking minimums until they have alternatives.
For example, all that church parking. If they didn’t have it, does the congregation have reasonable other ways to get there? Is there sufficient street parking? Is the neighborhood ok with a flood of cars overwhelming the streets every Sunday?
I live in a small city built out a couple decades ago that clearly shows both. There are quite a few churches near the town center without parking. Their congregations are mostly walking distance or can park on the street. We also have more suburban churches with huge parking lots, whose congregations have no option but to drive, there’s no street parking and the neighbors don’t want them flooding the neighborhoods every week.
So the question is how to get those suburban churches to be more like those downtown churches? I don’t think it’s as simple as removing the parking minimums so more buildings can squish into smaller areas. That’s one characteristic of denser areas, but I don’t see how it’s a defining feature
Having some way to get places other than a car, is a more useful feature to focus on
Edit after getting the article to load … in this case the minimum is 1/2 parking spot per unit. That not much. I guess they’re focusing on it being next to a subway so people have transportation options. Maybe it’s just my personal experience, but this is a place where more parking can be good. I used to live in a major city and enjoyed all the benefits of transit and walking: highly recommended! However I was never able to shake the occasional need for a car or even just the anxiety about a car, and eventually moved out to the ‘burbs. If I had a good place to park a car and leave it, I might still be living downtown using transit for almost everything. However partly due to this “all or nothing” approach, I now drive everywhere. How is that a win for anyone? I totally agree with reducing parking minimums for retail or businesses where people have options, but trying to build places to live that don’t provide what people need is counter-productive. Give me a city apartment with a place I can leave my car while I need a car or think I do, and over time if I can get away without a car I’ll carve money by getting rid of it
Edit - fuck. centuries ago. The point was my town was built pre-cars, which is important to this topic.
Removing parking minimums from new construction is a great method to slowly remove parking as a need to happen. This gives a great quick turn solution with a longer legs since only "needed" parking will be added as the surplus decreases.
I do feel that reduce car use requires both removing of incentives to drive (like free unlimited parked as an assumption) as well as adding other transit options. I know personally that if I know parking is going to be bad I start considering all my options since driving is such a default option. We need it both ways. Especially since adding more transit options are not going to be built unless people use them. People will use them if they have to which brings pressure to make more and better options. This works best when the people who need to use them are affluent and powerful. We need both
That's what we're gradually do over here in Norway, new apartment complexes does not even have 1 parking place per apartment, you have to buy one for about 40-60k usd if you want one
There's no requirements for guest parking either, which can be a pain. But basically everyone who wants to park needs to pay for it.
They also removed free street parking. People are whining that it will kill the towns, because people can't park in town for free, but not happened yet
Its fine to have free parking where there is space. There are less and less space so people might have to pay for parking but it should have people focus on none car options.