It's been a very busy week for me, what with a super event on Monday and an afternoon spent looking at apartments in addition to the usual stuff. But, I can always find time to rant about parking. David Biello reports:
City gurus estimate there are eight parking spots for every vehicle in the U.S. today... But according to the first nationwide count of parking spots, conducted by civil engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, last July, that might be a bit much, which is good news for the environment. It's more likely there are only three parking spaces for every car and truck in the U.S., or some 800 million spots to choose from.
Ah, only three. <sigh> That happens to correlate perfectly with the notion that people need three places for themselves-- one home, one workplace and one playspace. But do we really need three parking places for each car? Couldn't most of those spaces be eliminated with more mixed use planning, so that A uses a parking space during his worktime and B uses the same space during her playtime? Probably too much to ask that home parking spaces could actually be shared...
I think that more space sharing would make a lot more sense than building so many spaces. One combination I've noticed in a few locations is a bank or other daytime business sharing with a restaurant whose business is mostly in the evening. It would be great to see more of that.
As the amount of pavement and storm intensity have both increased, the corresponding increase in flooding has been mind blowing in some locations. We need to reverse that trend.
Posted by: Anne | Sunday, 23 January 2011 at 17:08