7 ms·

Here’s a crazy idea: let the property owner and developer decide the correct amount of parking to provide. And the size of the apartments. And the number of f

Here’s a crazy idea: let the property owner and developer decide the correct amount of parking to provide. And the size of the apartments. And the number of floors to build. The regulations here should be based around things like structural integrity, egress, and safety. Not views, not density, not what size of apartment is “too big” or “too small.” All of those are things the market can sort out.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Isn’t that basically just the libertarian mindset? Ie let individuals optimize for their own interests, even when the t as the detriment of the community? Markets are definitely efficient in sorting out short term individual goals, but not much beyond that.
- paulgb 7y ago
  I agree that markets can't solve everything, especially within the tight networks of externalities that exist in high-density cities. But with parking, I think the problem is the opposite: car owners create a negative externality (use of limited city-provided parking) that ends up costing non-car-owners because cities then require buildings to build parking.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    I agree that cities can screw this up, but the idea of leaving parking policy completely up to the free market is also unappealing. Parking mins are dumb, but parking maxes can make a lot of sense.
obelos 7y ago
It's crazy because it doesn't work. All of those factors rely upon the use of common, municipal resources, and those municipal resources, especially streets, often can't be expanded.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  Although the fact it's illegal to buy that parking and build housing shows which need is more important evidently.
  - obelos 7y ago
    When you're willing to externalize the costs of making mass-SOV transportation possible, to the advancement of personal gain, yes, “the market” will push people toward taking advantage of that discounted resource. Until there is established some sort of per-use fee for ROW use that offsets those externalities, the market pricing is already critically warped and cannot be used as an oracle for what people are willing to pay for being able to get to that parking spot, 10k sq foot residential lot, etc. EDIT: discounted, not “free.”
    - briandear 7y ago
      Do cyclists pay for their road usage? I paid over $600 for my California car registration and I pay significant gasoline taxes. I also pay significant income taxes. And bridge tolls. The taxes and fees that I directly pay for my car (registration and gas taxes) aren’t being used 100% for my road usage. That money is being used for bike lanes I never use or buses I never ride. So I am paying for someone else’s “externalities” while public transportation riders pay a subsidized fare. I am not opposed to public transport at all — but when we hear about motorists paying more for their “externalities,” I might argue that public transport users ought to be paying their fair share. Electric car drivers don’t even pay a gas tax but they roll on the same roads as everyone else without actually paying their “fair share.” They even get to clog up the HOV lanes despite rolling with a single person. I am stuck behind some single driver in a Tesla, while I have 5 people in the car while also getting the privilege of subsidizing his use of the road. I also get in traffic jams on roads like El Camino in Palo Alto while buses get to stop and block the road to unload a single person. It’s fashionable to hate cars, but when I need to get from Mountain View to the Hayward Airport at 4:30am, there is no combination of public transport that would get me there in less than 2 hours. Going from Palo Alto to Livermore on public transport is practically impossible. These European-style high density dreams aren’t based in reality for the majority of the United States. Making San Francisco high density would certainly be great, but applying that model to the rest of the Peninsula is just a pipe dream. 50 floor apartments like Korea would be the only way to make that work, but that still doesn’t account for the reality we have. Saratoga to Milpitas— how does that work with public transportation? The United States is built around cars. That horse has left the barn. You can’t realistically redesign the entirety of America to fit a model that is ideal for Copenhagen. Even in Europe, there are vast searches that are car dependent. Putting a tram or high frequency buses in southern France for instance would be ridiculous outside of Marseille perhaps. Even in the cities: how do you deliver a refrigerator easily within a pedestrian-only city? How about moving trucks? I spent a lot of time in Venice and prices for things are astronomical simply because everything has to be delivered via boat. Venice’s geography makes this unavoidable, but intentionally destroying city logistics because of some fantasy is ridiculous. We can do better, but the anti-car movement doesn’t really understand the Law of Unintended Consequences.
zjaffee 7y ago
I have to completely disagree with you here in terms of parking. Cities absolutely need to do significant transportation planning or you get the mess that exists throughout huge portions of the developing world. Even Los Angeles with it's traffic problems doesn't even come close to Mumbai. While governments aren't always good about solving these issues, the market would be worse as it's too decentralized to care about tragedy of the commons type problems. Additionally, I also indirectly disagree with the last two points because it is absolutely crucial that cities have some control over population changes as it relates to density. Utility overload is a real issue, and needs to be accounted for. Schools need to get built, sidewalks widened, and so on. What's ultimately needed is a form of adaptive city planning, that reacts to market forces (such as population changes, desire from developers to build new buildings, ect) with planned solutions such that there are no tragedy of the commons issues that come about. What's unacceptable is the 20+ year horizon planning that most cities do now.
rayvd 7y ago
This would eliminate too many middlemen and bureaucrats. We need the government to mandate what's optimal based on what lobbyists from parking construction firms advocate for. We also need to ensure the requirements are sufficiently high enough so that only a select few companies can effectively bid, ensuring minimal competition and maximum profitability, and maximum political donations. This is a critical cycle that must be preserved!
hackbinary 7y ago
I am guessing that you are aligned political to the ideological view of the smallest possible government and regulations. Unfortunately, developers and property owners will care nothing for the wider community. Firstly, at what point would you end regulations? Perhaps zoning and planning permission frameworks are too much? Let the market decide. Electrical, again that really is too much regulation, and we should let the free mark reign as people will have to adhere keep up their personal reputation. The unfortunate fact is that personal reputation does not count for shit. Just look at Trump and Johnson. They outright lie and nobody is holding them to account, so what makes you believe that shonky developers and property sales people will hold to their word. Secondly, our road systems and other community infrastructure can only accommodate and scale with so much growth. If growth is not managed reasonably, then our communities will become truly awful places to live. I would agree that where population density is lower, then there needs to be less regulation, and where it is higher there needs to be more. Finally, I would add that that charging 5p for disposable plastic shopping bags has had a hugely positive effect on curtailing the use of single use plastic bags. Sometimes there is too much regulation, and sometimes there is too little, but fundamentally we need regulation, and participatory democrat systems to manage it. Your quality of your life and ownership should not be obliterated overnight because somebody bought the neighbouring property and decided to build an industrial composting facility.
- briandear 7y ago
  Houston doesn’t have zoning and it seems to work just fine.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    Houston doesn't have official zoning. Instead it has land use regulations, like off-street parking mandates, which act like de facto zoning. https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-land-use/ https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-...
- astrange 7y ago
  > Finally, I would add that that charging 5p for disposable plastic shopping bags has had a hugely positive effect on curtailing the use of single use plastic bags. Although it's increased purchases of garbage bags, which use more plastic in the end because they're thicker.
paggle 7y ago
You could do that if you enabled per-minute and per-meter billing for usage of municipal resources like driving on shared roads.
- briandear 7y ago
  When bus fares are increased to account for the actual cost of the bus system, then let’s talk about metered usage for cars. Bus and train fares are heavily subsidized so those users aren’t paying their fair share either.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Sure, but first let's internalize all the externalized costs of cars, for example pollution.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

Isn’t that basically just the libertarian mindset? Ie let individuals optimize for their own interests, even when the t as the detriment of the community? Markets are definitely efficient in sorting out short term individual goals, but not much beyond that.

paulgb 7y ago
I agree that markets can't solve everything, especially within the tight networks of externalities that exist in high-density cities. But with parking, I think the problem is the opposite: car owners create a negative externality (use of limited city-provided parking) that ends up costing non-car-owners because cities then require buildings to build parking.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  I agree that cities can screw this up, but the idea of leaving parking policy completely up to the free market is also unappealing. Parking mins are dumb, but parking maxes can make a lot of sense.

obelos 7y ago

It's crazy because it doesn't work. All of those factors rely upon the use of common, municipal resources, and those municipal resources, especially streets, often can't be expanded.

CalRobert 7y ago
Although the fact it's illegal to buy that parking and build housing shows which need is more important evidently.
- obelos 7y ago
  When you're willing to externalize the costs of making mass-SOV transportation possible, to the advancement of personal gain, yes, “the market” will push people toward taking advantage of that discounted resource. Until there is established some sort of per-use fee for ROW use that offsets those externalities, the market pricing is already critically warped and cannot be used as an oracle for what people are willing to pay for being able to get to that parking spot, 10k sq foot residential lot, etc. EDIT: discounted, not “free.”
  - briandear 7y ago
    Do cyclists pay for their road usage? I paid over $600 for my California car registration and I pay significant gasoline taxes. I also pay significant income taxes. And bridge tolls. The taxes and fees that I directly pay for my car (registration and gas taxes) aren’t being used 100% for my road usage. That money is being used for bike lanes I never use or buses I never ride. So I am paying for someone else’s “externalities” while public transportation riders pay a subsidized fare. I am not opposed to public transport at all — but when we hear about motorists paying more for their “externalities,” I might argue that public transport users ought to be paying their fair share. Electric car drivers don’t even pay a gas tax but they roll on the same roads as everyone else without actually paying their “fair share.” They even get to clog up the HOV lanes despite rolling with a single person. I am stuck behind some single driver in a Tesla, while I have 5 people in the car while also getting the privilege of subsidizing his use of the road. I also get in traffic jams on roads like El Camino in Palo Alto while buses get to stop and block the road to unload a single person. It’s fashionable to hate cars, but when I need to get from Mountain View to the Hayward Airport at 4:30am, there is no combination of public transport that would get me there in less than 2 hours. Going from Palo Alto to Livermore on public transport is practically impossible. These European-style high density dreams aren’t based in reality for the majority of the United States. Making San Francisco high density would certainly be great, but applying that model to the rest of the Peninsula is just a pipe dream. 50 floor apartments like Korea would be the only way to make that work, but that still doesn’t account for the reality we have. Saratoga to Milpitas— how does that work with public transportation? The United States is built around cars. That horse has left the barn. You can’t realistically redesign the entirety of America to fit a model that is ideal for Copenhagen. Even in Europe, there are vast searches that are car dependent. Putting a tram or high frequency buses in southern France for instance would be ridiculous outside of Marseille perhaps. Even in the cities: how do you deliver a refrigerator easily within a pedestrian-only city? How about moving trucks? I spent a lot of time in Venice and prices for things are astronomical simply because everything has to be delivered via boat. Venice’s geography makes this unavoidable, but intentionally destroying city logistics because of some fantasy is ridiculous. We can do better, but the anti-car movement doesn’t really understand the Law of Unintended Consequences.

zjaffee 7y ago

I have to completely disagree with you here in terms of parking. Cities absolutely need to do significant transportation planning or you get the mess that exists throughout huge portions of the developing world. Even Los Angeles with it's traffic problems doesn't even come close to Mumbai. While governments aren't always good about solving these issues, the market would be worse as it's too decentralized to care about tragedy of the commons type problems. Additionally, I also indirectly disagree with the last two points because it is absolutely crucial that cities have some control over population changes as it relates to density. Utility overload is a real issue, and needs to be accounted for. Schools need to get built, sidewalks widened, and so on. What's ultimately needed is a form of adaptive city planning, that reacts to market forces (such as population changes, desire from developers to build new buildings, ect) with planned solutions such that there are no tragedy of the commons issues that come about. What's unacceptable is the 20+ year horizon planning that most cities do now.

rayvd 7y ago

This would eliminate too many middlemen and bureaucrats. We need the government to mandate what's optimal based on what lobbyists from parking construction firms advocate for. We also need to ensure the requirements are sufficiently high enough so that only a select few companies can effectively bid, ensuring minimal competition and maximum profitability, and maximum political donations. This is a critical cycle that must be preserved!

hackbinary 7y ago

I am guessing that you are aligned political to the ideological view of the smallest possible government and regulations. Unfortunately, developers and property owners will care nothing for the wider community. Firstly, at what point would you end regulations? Perhaps zoning and planning permission frameworks are too much? Let the market decide. Electrical, again that really is too much regulation, and we should let the free mark reign as people will have to adhere keep up their personal reputation. The unfortunate fact is that personal reputation does not count for shit. Just look at Trump and Johnson. They outright lie and nobody is holding them to account, so what makes you believe that shonky developers and property sales people will hold to their word. Secondly, our road systems and other community infrastructure can only accommodate and scale with so much growth. If growth is not managed reasonably, then our communities will become truly awful places to live. I would agree that where population density is lower, then there needs to be less regulation, and where it is higher there needs to be more. Finally, I would add that that charging 5p for disposable plastic shopping bags has had a hugely positive effect on curtailing the use of single use plastic bags. Sometimes there is too much regulation, and sometimes there is too little, but fundamentally we need regulation, and participatory democrat systems to manage it. Your quality of your life and ownership should not be obliterated overnight because somebody bought the neighbouring property and decided to build an industrial composting facility.

briandear 7y ago
Houston doesn’t have zoning and it seems to work just fine.
- eesmith 7y ago
  Houston doesn't have official zoning. Instead it has land use regulations, like off-street parking mandates, which act like de facto zoning. https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-land-use/ https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-...
astrange 7y ago
> Finally, I would add that that charging 5p for disposable plastic shopping bags has had a hugely positive effect on curtailing the use of single use plastic bags. Although it's increased purchases of garbage bags, which use more plastic in the end because they're thicker.

paggle 7y ago

You could do that if you enabled per-minute and per-meter billing for usage of municipal resources like driving on shared roads.

briandear 7y ago
When bus fares are increased to account for the actual cost of the bus system, then let’s talk about metered usage for cars. Bus and train fares are heavily subsidized so those users aren’t paying their fair share either.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Sure, but first let's internalize all the externalized costs of cars, for example pollution.