> First off, parking isn't flat & spread out. It is very often stacked & condensed into compact areas known parking garages, some of which sit under housing complexes and so take up no extra real estate at all.
Housing is very often stacked and condensed too, so x square feet of parking is equivalent to x square feet of housing (or retail, or ...). Actually it's even worse than that because LA's parking minimums require the parking to be on the bottom floors - the ones that would be most valuable and convenient for humans.
> I don't have any comprehensive solution to this problem, but what I am pretty sure of is that there's no single silver bullet solution that will massively improve the situation. (or if there is such a solution & I'm just not smart enough to find it, it's not going to be found in parking spaces.)
I'm more and more convinced that eliminating "free" parking is the silver bullet. It's a massive distortion to how we arrange our cities. Once there's a level playing field for parking to compete with other land uses, the market can sort the rest out.
I see your point about residential being stacked as well. However the marginal increase in supply of real estate by taking 10% of what's used by parking hardly seems sufficient to make a dent in the supply/demand curve of the market.
As for eliminating free parking, I think it would have a disproportionate effect on people at the lower end of income. Everyone else can absorb the cost. Even if that isn't the case, the effect would be to push more people to mass transit. That's not a bad thing, but mass transit is already unable to keep up with needs.
It would need to be accompanied by mass transit infrastructure improvements. That would be a political hot potato, requiring either tax increases or issuing debt via bond to pay for it in the short term until fares could cover the costs in the long term. So add political & public awareness campaigning to the solution. What looks like a silver bullet becomes ever more complex.
> I see your point about residential being stacked as well. However the marginal increase in supply of real estate by taking 10% of what's used by parking hardly seems sufficient to make a dent in the supply/demand curve of the market.
Well, the article claims a 20-33% increase in the number of housing units for developments without parking, so say 2-3% more housing. IIRC the economists reckon it's about a 2:1 ratio between supply change and price change, so a 4-7% drop in the price of equally valuable housing. That may not be revolutionary but it would be a significant difference for a lot of people. Cities put a lot of effort into policies with much smaller effects.
> As for eliminating free parking, I think it would have a disproportionate effect on people at the lower end of income. Everyone else can absorb the cost. Even if that isn't the case, the effect would be to push more people to mass transit. That's not a bad thing, but mass transit is already unable to keep up with needs.
Fewer private cars on the road would speed up buses (which would mean the same number of buses could transport more people) and make cyclists safer, and it's actually the lowest income people - those who are already living without a car - who benefit the most there. And densification by replacing parking spaces with homes and workplaces would reduce the pressure on all kinds of transport, by making it easier for people to live closer to where they work.
Housing is very often stacked and condensed too, so x square feet of parking is equivalent to x square feet of housing (or retail, or ...). Actually it's even worse than that because LA's parking minimums require the parking to be on the bottom floors - the ones that would be most valuable and convenient for humans.
> I don't have any comprehensive solution to this problem, but what I am pretty sure of is that there's no single silver bullet solution that will massively improve the situation. (or if there is such a solution & I'm just not smart enough to find it, it's not going to be found in parking spaces.)
I'm more and more convinced that eliminating "free" parking is the silver bullet. It's a massive distortion to how we arrange our cities. Once there's a level playing field for parking to compete with other land uses, the market can sort the rest out.