11 ms·

Less parking could mean more housing

66 points by jseliger 4y ago

dubswithus 4y ago
If a house wasn't seen as a way to get rich we would have more housing. Everyone could put their savings into other investments and pay a pittance for their home.
- ls15 4y ago
  I would be fine with that, as long as I get the nicest home of all.
  - dubswithus 4y ago
    Some of the crappiest houses near SF sell for millions. I get the argument that the land is worth a lot. It's worth a lot to speculators.
- danuker 4y ago
  Problem is, housing is key to a rich life. Whether you live in a car-dependent suburb, or in a city, real estate that lets you save time when living will always be more valuable. In addition, low interest rates might be the reason people CAN buy houses with enormous valuations. Not just housing is overvalued, but companies' stocks also. https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe
  - dubswithus 4y ago
    Housing anywhere is expensive for the remote worker that doesn't need to be close to the city because property has dramatically increased in price relative to wages. > Not just housing is overvalued, but companies' stocks also. Berkshire has outperformed houses.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  You can buy a cheap house. The catch is: it's in a remote town in Ohio. If I could have bought my 4 bed house with average garden on the outskirts of London for £50k, I wouldn't have bought it. I'd have bought an 6 bed house with a swimming pool, huge garden, double garage and driveway in central London instead, for the price I paid for my house. Not to get rich, just because I'd like more space, a pool, a big garden and a short walk to one of the world's best city's centre. It's a physical impossibility to build everyone a large detached family home in the city centre, and most people don't want to live in apartments forever. I believe the real solution is allowing small towns to grow into cities, and building a ton of very fast and effective rapid 24/7 transport so you can ferry people into the urban core of large cities from those cheaper smaller cities. We can scale out fast trains in a way that we can't scale out cycling, walking and cars. In my mind, the ideal model for a livable megacity is an extremely large conurbation of individually small, walk/cyclable cities with low to mid-density housing, with the cities separated from each other by large public green spaces and all linked together with rapid public transport, and huge disincentives for cars.
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    > most people don't want to live in apartments forever. I believe this would not be the case if we built apartments better. For my personal take I'd need a communal workshop / garage to store and work on my motorcycle, far better sound deadening, equivalent square footage of personal space, a nice playground for my kids, affordability to move to N+1 bedrooms when N+1th child arrives, and that fresh clean air feeling that the suburbs has which downtown SF's crap and urine infested streets do not... oh and as affordable as the suburbs (net of benefits of being central)
    - RHSeeger 4y ago
      There is a significant portion of the population that believe that everyone wants to own a home, nobody wants to rent ever, and all landlords are direct relatives of Satan. I'll note from personal experience that, on places like Reddit, mentioning that some landlords are great and sometimes renting is a good option... has a fair likelihood of causing an outpouring of downvotes.
egberts1 4y ago
as Pew Trusts reported, that is only a “low-hanging fruit” solution. It still does not solve the California’s lack-of-living space problem overall, much less Oregon’s.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  Oregon state? Surely you mean the 3 square miles of Portland
bombcar 4y ago
Less parking improves density which can improve many other things, as well. It doesn't even have to be much less, just no longer require it and it starts to solve itself.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  And reduces livability, I have a friend who lives 10 minutes away by car, an hour away by bus, and despite living in a nice neighborhood, people keep getting stabbed, shot, or mugged at or near the busy bus station nearby. Last time she came to visit, somebody got stabbed at the bus station an hour after she passed through. Someone got murdered on a bus within a few blocks of me two months ago. I'm living in a very walkable neighborhood with only a moderate parking availability problem and similar groups of people are encouraging the police to do nothing while encouraging density nonsense through restricting parking. If you want to create dense slums where the only people who don't leave are those who can't afford to, this is exactly what you should advocate. I don't want to live somewhere where I have to worry about a guest's safety, cars achieve that to a significant degree. Fuck everybody who wants to ruin cities by cramming people in as close as possible.
  - chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
    Arguably some of those problems would be solved by greater density, right? Density makes better public transit economical, density reduces homelessness by bringing down housing costs. That's crazy that people are getting murdered at your bus stop though. What city do you live in?
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      I live near Hennepin and Lake St in Minneapolis. People getting murdered, assaulted, and robbed isn't a homelessness problem (it is quite hard to survive winter being homeless in Minnesota) it is a gang, poverty, and policing problem. Part of it is accepting a large number of Somalian refugees, a small but significant number of whom disproportionally contribute to crime, but it's not exclusively that group. Despite the business robberies, gun shots, assaults and murders blocks away from me, my rent is still $2000.
clarkevans 4y ago
The minimum parking space requirement is what existing residents, who rely upon on-street parking, ask so they are not negatively impacted by dense housing proposals. This is especially true in areas where it's still near impossible to operate without a car. There is a mitigating factor of these larger housing units: mixed zoning with commercial space on the ground floor helps reduce the need for a cars in the first place. Some guidelines assume two working adults per unit, each with their own car. However, we're finding less spots are needed. With local commercial development, one car per unit is turning out to be more the norm for some areas and even less with greater density, since public transit is often better. Having satellite parking /w shuttle might also be a solution for those who only "need" a car for weekend travel.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  I think 2 per residential unit is quite high. Probably too high, but on other hand 0 or lot less than 1 isn't generally working out too great in many places yet. People will find places to park their cars first filling the legal assigned and then moving to what is available and eventually even breaking rules.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  In California, it is illegal for cities to establish combination resident-preference and paid parking, and it is also illegal to charge more for residential parking permits than it costs to administer the program. It is probably also illegal, based on the opinion of the state AG but never tried in court, to discriminate between "existing residents" and everyone else when handing out parking permits. I would add that it's also totally unethical. Mostly what the people in my California city who "rely" on street parking need to do is stop hoarding and clean out their garage, and stop collecting used Volvos to store in their driveways.
  - inferiorhuman 4y ago
    That's oddly specific to the point I wonder if you're referring to someone I know.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
dr_dshiv 4y ago
Come to the Netherlands and see how it’s done. It was a car dominated culture till the 60s when they did the “stop murdering our children” campaign. Then, cities reorganized to minimize car use. I love not owning a car. So freeing.
- colejohnson66 4y ago
  The solution to the US' car problem is not as simple as "less cars is good! Just fix your cities!". Cities have been designed around the automobile for decades to the point where, in a lot of places, you literally can't do anything without a car or walking over a mile. NYC and DC manage fine because there's subway systems, but the vast majority of cities are not like that.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    right, but the solution to that is to redesign cities.
    - colejohnson66 4y ago
      Don't get me wrong; I wish we were less car-dependent too, but it isn't going to happen in our lifetimes. Cars are too deeply ingrained in American culture, and Europeans bragging about their cities isn't going to change that. Not to mention how massive the US is! We have states (California and Texas) that are larger than over half of the European countries.
      - whiplash451 4y ago
        Not sure why you are being downvoted systematically on this thread. I think your point is very valid.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - 4y ago
chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
This is great. Let the free market regulate parking.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  It's not the free market. Property developers will give you "just enough to not get fired" and people grow accustomed to the worsening conditions until they hit their tipping point and leave for much less environmentally friendly suburban sprawl because of the human-hostile policies being pushed that are only tolerated by the young, the poor, and people who just don't care about space (likely without families). I almost never see small children in my neighborhood and there are a good set of reasons why.
  - erikpt-work 4y ago
    That tipping point came last year for me and I moved to suburbia for exactly the reasons above. Zero regrets and I get to have space to have a real garden and fruit trees on my property. Couldn't ever get that in high-density housing environment.
    - maerF0x0 4y ago
      +1 and i still live in a condo complex. But my rent is only 66% what it was, my place is 10% larger, yes I spend a tiny bit more on car costs. But frankly I am happier here than I was living downtown San Francisco.
ars 4y ago
Getting rid of parking doesn't magically also get rid of the need for a car. And no, having public transit within half a mile does not replace a car. All that's going to happen in these places is they'll make people miserable as they drive in circles looking for a parking place, or they'll park several streets over, making those neighbors annoyed they can't find a place, then they introduce residential parking permits, to make sure only the right people park. Eventually home prices and types adjust so that only low income people who can't afford a car park there, or the opposite happens: they knock down a house or two, turn it into a parking lot and rent those spots out, increasing the cost for anyone who wants to live there. I've lived in a place like that - not having a car was not an option, but it was all apartment buildings with no parking. They gave us a paper with the names of several local places with lots where we could rent a parking spot, which is what we did. We moved away as soon as we could - who wants to live in a place like that?
- turtledove 4y ago
  You can easily live in Seattle city limits without owning a car, and our transit story is pretty bad. In a city that really funded transit it would be trivial.
  - robocat 4y ago
    No car is fine if: - you limit your friends and family to those that live where you can access them. - you choose sports that don’t require remote locations or large equipment (no mountains, no surfboards, etcetera) or you live where your sport is. - you move where you can access your job, or you limit your job prospects. I have lived without a car in a variety of places in the world. Public transport is great if you can accept the set of limitations imposed upon you.
    - turtledove 4y ago
      You know you can rent cars, right? Or share a car as a community? And yes, it does mean some limits, but they aren't as severe as many people think.
bergenty 4y ago
turtledove 4y ago
I got called a communist on hacker news for suggesting this idea. It'll be interesting to see how the comments shake out. Less cars and less parking is a good start, but we also need to build more transit and bike infrastructure.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Ah yes, communists are famous for wanting to repeal government regulations on housing!
Group_B 4y ago
Everything is too spread out. That’s the main issue. You can’t magically get infrastructure to become more dense.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  There is a bit of a chicken and an egg problem though; the infrastructure for cars makes things less dense. Without removing minimum-parking laws (which is what TFA is about), it will be extremely challenging to build walkable areas. My parents live in a fairly dense part of Northern Virginia, and we walk a lot of places. More than 50% of our walking distance is across or around parking, in some cases much more.
- dangus 4y ago
  Some simple changes to bike lanes and street/lane design in NYC is drastically reducing cycling deaths. It took the city less than a decade to make a big difference. A lot of change is actually well within reach even in sparsely populated suburbs. What’s really happening is that cars are subsidized and encouraged. Make people pay the real costs of driving and parking and replacing bad zoning rules and development practices and you’ll see steady progress. Mandatory parking minimums are effectively a price cap. We don’t even cap the price of healthcare, why are we capping the price of parking?
maerF0x0 4y ago
We have to remember that fundamentally this all boils down to economics and rate of return on capital. There's (engineering wise) nothing stopping many communities from either adding more space underground, or above ground by building more levels. It's simply the demands of capital (and workers) that makes it unprofitable to do. We could have parking stalls and walkability and bicycles if capitalists didn't demand the rates of return on money, or workers didn't cost as much as they do, or land was more reasonably partitioned across the populace rather than grand fathered in from antiquity.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  > We could have parking stalls and walkability and bicycles if capitalists didn't demand the rates of return on money, or workers didn't cost as much as they do, or land was more reasonably partitioned across the populace rather than grand fathered in from antiquity. When the three options you offer are "rich people being okay with less money" "forced labor" and "redistribute land more equally" it seems like a rather thinly veiled push for Georgism...
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    > Georgism TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism aka Geoism IDK at first blush it seems ethically sound, but I suppose I need more than 5 minutes to really learn the nuances.
    - maerF0x0 4y ago
      one concern/thought that quickly comes to mind is "What about compounding value of the created?" . This seems increasingly relevant as wealth is increasingly derived from the created rather than basic underlying resources. Eg: should we land tax the rents from the metaverse?
      - aidenn0 4y ago
        A fundamental idea of Georgism is that the land belongs to everybody, so rather than owning land, one essentially rents it from the people. More desirable land is rented at a higher rate. If the land you are renting could be making someone else millions with a higher productivity use, then you need to pay for the privilege of not using it for that higher productivity use.
Finnucane 4y ago
Around where I live, there's a lot of pressure to get rid of at least surface lots, because the land they're on is just too valuable. Not just the demand for new housing, but commercial development continues--there's a bunch of massive biotech complexes under construction nearby right now. With lots being sold at $30 million an acre, even the cost of burying parking underground is trivial in comparison.
maerF0x0 4y ago
Ask HN: are there any planned cities in the USA that have these kinds of European style values in their constitution / laws?
CubsFan1060 4y ago
This will be very interesting. I feel like some of the recent elections are showing that perhaps some more liberal policies have gone too far. It'll be interesting to see how people might react if they either can't own a car, or can't park very close to home. An interesting model for a city would be a dense city with some sort of shared cars on the outskirts for when you need road trips.
TimPC 4y ago
Does anyone find the specific distances problematic? Half a mile to the nearest bus seems awfully far for not needing parking. My guess is that this leads to dramatic increases in street parking.
- chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
  Half a mile is a ten minute walk. This is fine?
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Depends...is it through a park? A downtown shopping district? A dimly lit industrial area?
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Americans are majority obese. 10 minutes walking could be too much.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    10 minute walk, time it wrong, wait half an hour for next bus. Travel 10-20 minutes Then go to wait next bus wait for an other 20 minutes, then 10-20 minutes more and finally an other 10 minute walk... Yeah, I take my car.
least 4y ago
> Citing environmental concerns and a lack of housing, an increasing number of cities and some West Coast states are reconsidering mandates that all homes, offices and businesses offer a minimum number of parking spots for residents, workers and customers. > "Most Americans drive to most places, and that's going to be true 20 years from now, there's just no way it isn't," Herriges said. "But we desperately need to make the alternatives more available to more people and at a price point that's available to more people. Parking is the biggest obstacle standing in the way of that." No, it's really not. Local governments and NIMBYs that control them prevent changes to zoning laws that could actually help alleviate housing issues. How about letting MFHs go up in your SFH zoned neighborhood? How about getting rid of arbitrary limits on how high you can build up? > "If you have more compact, walkable, mixed-use areas and you eliminate or reduce those off-street parking requirements, people drive less," McCurdy said. "They might not need to own that second car. Or a car at all. And they certainly use it less often and drive fewer miles. So it's kind of a win-win all around on housing affordability and climate." I think this hits the nail on the head. Mixed used areas should be present pretty much everywhere. I lived in Germany for almost ten years and I've never encountered a town in the US much like the ones there. I lived in a single family home, but right next door was an apartment building, and on the same exact street at the corner was a Totto Lotto. On the street perpendicular to the one I lived on was a bakery, a clothes shop, a gas station, a small grocery store, an asian food restaurant, and an ice cream shop. I could easily walk to various shops because the zoning laws allowed for it. In Japan even the most residential of zoning still allows for shops to be run out of them. In the US we hardly allow businesses to be in vicinity of housing. I do think it's fair that we do need roads for large vehicles because we can't magically transport bulk goods from warehouses into local shops, but there's probably a better solution than what exists currently in most American cities. There could maybe be better bifurcation on the use of roads that still allows safe pedestrian/bicycle traffic. I also do think that parking lots are a waste of space, at least the surface level ones. I just don't know that I agree that it's a low hanging fruit like these people do. You can't get rid of them until you alleviate the need for them. You can't do that until you make changes in policy through the government or a broad change in requirements for commuting in the first place, like expanding WFH. Change the zoning laws.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
Krisjohn 4y ago
If the government wants to solve the housing affordability crisis it needs to eliminate policies that increase house prices and keep wages low, then it needs to build houses and increase minimum wage. Everything else is a distraction.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  Building parking is expensive, eliminating parking minimums will reduce the cost of building out new housing.
sys_64738 4y ago
It also means more houses closer together which I don't really want. I want to be far from my neighbors and even a wave is hard to spot from the distance. I'll keep my car, thanks very much.

66 points by jseliger 4y ago

If a house wasn't seen as a way to get rich we would have more housing. Everyone could put their savings into other investments and pay a pittance for their home.

ls15 4y ago
I would be fine with that, as long as I get the nicest home of all.
- dubswithus 4y ago
  Some of the crappiest houses near SF sell for millions. I get the argument that the land is worth a lot. It's worth a lot to speculators.
danuker 4y ago
Problem is, housing is key to a rich life. Whether you live in a car-dependent suburb, or in a city, real estate that lets you save time when living will always be more valuable. In addition, low interest rates might be the reason people CAN buy houses with enormous valuations. Not just housing is overvalued, but companies' stocks also. https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe
- dubswithus 4y ago
  Housing anywhere is expensive for the remote worker that doesn't need to be close to the city because property has dramatically increased in price relative to wages. > Not just housing is overvalued, but companies' stocks also. Berkshire has outperformed houses.
cameronh90 4y ago
You can buy a cheap house. The catch is: it's in a remote town in Ohio. If I could have bought my 4 bed house with average garden on the outskirts of London for £50k, I wouldn't have bought it. I'd have bought an 6 bed house with a swimming pool, huge garden, double garage and driveway in central London instead, for the price I paid for my house. Not to get rich, just because I'd like more space, a pool, a big garden and a short walk to one of the world's best city's centre. It's a physical impossibility to build everyone a large detached family home in the city centre, and most people don't want to live in apartments forever. I believe the real solution is allowing small towns to grow into cities, and building a ton of very fast and effective rapid 24/7 transport so you can ferry people into the urban core of large cities from those cheaper smaller cities. We can scale out fast trains in a way that we can't scale out cycling, walking and cars. In my mind, the ideal model for a livable megacity is an extremely large conurbation of individually small, walk/cyclable cities with low to mid-density housing, with the cities separated from each other by large public green spaces and all linked together with rapid public transport, and huge disincentives for cars.
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  > most people don't want to live in apartments forever. I believe this would not be the case if we built apartments better. For my personal take I'd need a communal workshop / garage to store and work on my motorcycle, far better sound deadening, equivalent square footage of personal space, a nice playground for my kids, affordability to move to N+1 bedrooms when N+1th child arrives, and that fresh clean air feeling that the suburbs has which downtown SF's crap and urine infested streets do not... oh and as affordable as the suburbs (net of benefits of being central)
  - RHSeeger 4y ago
    There is a significant portion of the population that believe that everyone wants to own a home, nobody wants to rent ever, and all landlords are direct relatives of Satan. I'll note from personal experience that, on places like Reddit, mentioning that some landlords are great and sometimes renting is a good option... has a fair likelihood of causing an outpouring of downvotes.

egberts1 4y ago

as Pew Trusts reported, that is only a “low-hanging fruit” solution. It still does not solve the California’s lack-of-living space problem overall, much less Oregon’s.

upsidesinclude 4y ago
Oregon state? Surely you mean the 3 square miles of Portland

bombcar 4y ago

Less parking improves density which can improve many other things, as well. It doesn't even have to be much less, just no longer require it and it starts to solve itself.

colechristensen 4y ago
And reduces livability, I have a friend who lives 10 minutes away by car, an hour away by bus, and despite living in a nice neighborhood, people keep getting stabbed, shot, or mugged at or near the busy bus station nearby. Last time she came to visit, somebody got stabbed at the bus station an hour after she passed through. Someone got murdered on a bus within a few blocks of me two months ago. I'm living in a very walkable neighborhood with only a moderate parking availability problem and similar groups of people are encouraging the police to do nothing while encouraging density nonsense through restricting parking. If you want to create dense slums where the only people who don't leave are those who can't afford to, this is exactly what you should advocate. I don't want to live somewhere where I have to worry about a guest's safety, cars achieve that to a significant degree. Fuck everybody who wants to ruin cities by cramming people in as close as possible.
- chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
  Arguably some of those problems would be solved by greater density, right? Density makes better public transit economical, density reduces homelessness by bringing down housing costs. That's crazy that people are getting murdered at your bus stop though. What city do you live in?
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    I live near Hennepin and Lake St in Minneapolis. People getting murdered, assaulted, and robbed isn't a homelessness problem (it is quite hard to survive winter being homeless in Minnesota) it is a gang, poverty, and policing problem. Part of it is accepting a large number of Somalian refugees, a small but significant number of whom disproportionally contribute to crime, but it's not exclusively that group. Despite the business robberies, gun shots, assaults and murders blocks away from me, my rent is still $2000.

clarkevans 4y ago

The minimum parking space requirement is what existing residents, who rely upon on-street parking, ask so they are not negatively impacted by dense housing proposals. This is especially true in areas where it's still near impossible to operate without a car. There is a mitigating factor of these larger housing units: mixed zoning with commercial space on the ground floor helps reduce the need for a cars in the first place. Some guidelines assume two working adults per unit, each with their own car. However, we're finding less spots are needed. With local commercial development, one car per unit is turning out to be more the norm for some areas and even less with greater density, since public transit is often better. Having satellite parking /w shuttle might also be a solution for those who only "need" a car for weekend travel.

Ekaros 4y ago
I think 2 per residential unit is quite high. Probably too high, but on other hand 0 or lot less than 1 isn't generally working out too great in many places yet. People will find places to park their cars first filling the legal assigned and then moving to what is available and eventually even breaking rules.
jeffbee 4y ago
In California, it is illegal for cities to establish combination resident-preference and paid parking, and it is also illegal to charge more for residential parking permits than it costs to administer the program. It is probably also illegal, based on the opinion of the state AG but never tried in court, to discriminate between "existing residents" and everyone else when handing out parking permits. I would add that it's also totally unethical. Mostly what the people in my California city who "rely" on street parking need to do is stop hoarding and clean out their garage, and stop collecting used Volvos to store in their driveways.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  That's oddly specific to the point I wonder if you're referring to someone I know.
giraffe_lady 4y ago

dr_dshiv 4y ago

Come to the Netherlands and see how it’s done. It was a car dominated culture till the 60s when they did the “stop murdering our children” campaign. Then, cities reorganized to minimize car use. I love not owning a car. So freeing.

colejohnson66 4y ago
The solution to the US' car problem is not as simple as "less cars is good! Just fix your cities!". Cities have been designed around the automobile for decades to the point where, in a lot of places, you literally can't do anything without a car or walking over a mile. NYC and DC manage fine because there's subway systems, but the vast majority of cities are not like that.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  right, but the solution to that is to redesign cities.
  - colejohnson66 4y ago
    Don't get me wrong; I wish we were less car-dependent too, but it isn't going to happen in our lifetimes. Cars are too deeply ingrained in American culture, and Europeans bragging about their cities isn't going to change that. Not to mention how massive the US is! We have states (California and Texas) that are larger than over half of the European countries.
    - whiplash451 4y ago
      Not sure why you are being downvoted systematically on this thread. I think your point is very valid.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - 4y ago

chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago

This is great. Let the free market regulate parking.

colechristensen 4y ago
It's not the free market. Property developers will give you "just enough to not get fired" and people grow accustomed to the worsening conditions until they hit their tipping point and leave for much less environmentally friendly suburban sprawl because of the human-hostile policies being pushed that are only tolerated by the young, the poor, and people who just don't care about space (likely without families). I almost never see small children in my neighborhood and there are a good set of reasons why.
- erikpt-work 4y ago
  That tipping point came last year for me and I moved to suburbia for exactly the reasons above. Zero regrets and I get to have space to have a real garden and fruit trees on my property. Couldn't ever get that in high-density housing environment.
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    +1 and i still live in a condo complex. But my rent is only 66% what it was, my place is 10% larger, yes I spend a tiny bit more on car costs. But frankly I am happier here than I was living downtown San Francisco.

ars 4y ago

Getting rid of parking doesn't magically also get rid of the need for a car. And no, having public transit within half a mile does not replace a car. All that's going to happen in these places is they'll make people miserable as they drive in circles looking for a parking place, or they'll park several streets over, making those neighbors annoyed they can't find a place, then they introduce residential parking permits, to make sure only the right people park. Eventually home prices and types adjust so that only low income people who can't afford a car park there, or the opposite happens: they knock down a house or two, turn it into a parking lot and rent those spots out, increasing the cost for anyone who wants to live there. I've lived in a place like that - not having a car was not an option, but it was all apartment buildings with no parking. They gave us a paper with the names of several local places with lots where we could rent a parking spot, which is what we did. We moved away as soon as we could - who wants to live in a place like that?

turtledove 4y ago
You can easily live in Seattle city limits without owning a car, and our transit story is pretty bad. In a city that really funded transit it would be trivial.
- robocat 4y ago
  No car is fine if: - you limit your friends and family to those that live where you can access them. - you choose sports that don’t require remote locations or large equipment (no mountains, no surfboards, etcetera) or you live where your sport is. - you move where you can access your job, or you limit your job prospects. I have lived without a car in a variety of places in the world. Public transport is great if you can accept the set of limitations imposed upon you.
  - turtledove 4y ago
    You know you can rent cars, right? Or share a car as a community? And yes, it does mean some limits, but they aren't as severe as many people think.

bergenty 4y ago

turtledove 4y ago

I got called a communist on hacker news for suggesting this idea. It'll be interesting to see how the comments shake out. Less cars and less parking is a good start, but we also need to build more transit and bike infrastructure.

aidenn0 4y ago
Ah yes, communists are famous for wanting to repeal government regulations on housing!

Group_B 4y ago

Everything is too spread out. That’s the main issue. You can’t magically get infrastructure to become more dense.

aidenn0 4y ago
There is a bit of a chicken and an egg problem though; the infrastructure for cars makes things less dense. Without removing minimum-parking laws (which is what TFA is about), it will be extremely challenging to build walkable areas. My parents live in a fairly dense part of Northern Virginia, and we walk a lot of places. More than 50% of our walking distance is across or around parking, in some cases much more.
dangus 4y ago
Some simple changes to bike lanes and street/lane design in NYC is drastically reducing cycling deaths. It took the city less than a decade to make a big difference. A lot of change is actually well within reach even in sparsely populated suburbs. What’s really happening is that cars are subsidized and encouraged. Make people pay the real costs of driving and parking and replacing bad zoning rules and development practices and you’ll see steady progress. Mandatory parking minimums are effectively a price cap. We don’t even cap the price of healthcare, why are we capping the price of parking?

maerF0x0 4y ago

We have to remember that fundamentally this all boils down to economics and rate of return on capital. There's (engineering wise) nothing stopping many communities from either adding more space underground, or above ground by building more levels. It's simply the demands of capital (and workers) that makes it unprofitable to do. We could have parking stalls and walkability and bicycles if capitalists didn't demand the rates of return on money, or workers didn't cost as much as they do, or land was more reasonably partitioned across the populace rather than grand fathered in from antiquity.

aidenn0 4y ago
> We could have parking stalls and walkability and bicycles if capitalists didn't demand the rates of return on money, or workers didn't cost as much as they do, or land was more reasonably partitioned across the populace rather than grand fathered in from antiquity. When the three options you offer are "rich people being okay with less money" "forced labor" and "redistribute land more equally" it seems like a rather thinly veiled push for Georgism...
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  > Georgism TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism aka Geoism IDK at first blush it seems ethically sound, but I suppose I need more than 5 minutes to really learn the nuances.
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    one concern/thought that quickly comes to mind is "What about compounding value of the created?" . This seems increasingly relevant as wealth is increasingly derived from the created rather than basic underlying resources. Eg: should we land tax the rents from the metaverse?
    - aidenn0 4y ago
      A fundamental idea of Georgism is that the land belongs to everybody, so rather than owning land, one essentially rents it from the people. More desirable land is rented at a higher rate. If the land you are renting could be making someone else millions with a higher productivity use, then you need to pay for the privilege of not using it for that higher productivity use.

Finnucane 4y ago

Around where I live, there's a lot of pressure to get rid of at least surface lots, because the land they're on is just too valuable. Not just the demand for new housing, but commercial development continues--there's a bunch of massive biotech complexes under construction nearby right now. With lots being sold at $30 million an acre, even the cost of burying parking underground is trivial in comparison.

maerF0x0 4y ago

Ask HN: are there any planned cities in the USA that have these kinds of European style values in their constitution / laws?

CubsFan1060 4y ago

This will be very interesting. I feel like some of the recent elections are showing that perhaps some more liberal policies have gone too far. It'll be interesting to see how people might react if they either can't own a car, or can't park very close to home. An interesting model for a city would be a dense city with some sort of shared cars on the outskirts for when you need road trips.

TimPC 4y ago

Does anyone find the specific distances problematic? Half a mile to the nearest bus seems awfully far for not needing parking. My guess is that this leads to dramatic increases in street parking.

chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
Half a mile is a ten minute walk. This is fine?
- googlryas 4y ago
  Depends...is it through a park? A downtown shopping district? A dimly lit industrial area?
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Americans are majority obese. 10 minutes walking could be too much.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  10 minute walk, time it wrong, wait half an hour for next bus. Travel 10-20 minutes Then go to wait next bus wait for an other 20 minutes, then 10-20 minutes more and finally an other 10 minute walk... Yeah, I take my car.

least 4y ago

> Citing environmental concerns and a lack of housing, an increasing number of cities and some West Coast states are reconsidering mandates that all homes, offices and businesses offer a minimum number of parking spots for residents, workers and customers. > "Most Americans drive to most places, and that's going to be true 20 years from now, there's just no way it isn't," Herriges said. "But we desperately need to make the alternatives more available to more people and at a price point that's available to more people. Parking is the biggest obstacle standing in the way of that." No, it's really not. Local governments and NIMBYs that control them prevent changes to zoning laws that could actually help alleviate housing issues. How about letting MFHs go up in your SFH zoned neighborhood? How about getting rid of arbitrary limits on how high you can build up? > "If you have more compact, walkable, mixed-use areas and you eliminate or reduce those off-street parking requirements, people drive less," McCurdy said. "They might not need to own that second car. Or a car at all. And they certainly use it less often and drive fewer miles. So it's kind of a win-win all around on housing affordability and climate." I think this hits the nail on the head. Mixed used areas should be present pretty much everywhere. I lived in Germany for almost ten years and I've never encountered a town in the US much like the ones there. I lived in a single family home, but right next door was an apartment building, and on the same exact street at the corner was a Totto Lotto. On the street perpendicular to the one I lived on was a bakery, a clothes shop, a gas station, a small grocery store, an asian food restaurant, and an ice cream shop. I could easily walk to various shops because the zoning laws allowed for it. In Japan even the most residential of zoning still allows for shops to be run out of them. In the US we hardly allow businesses to be in vicinity of housing. I do think it's fair that we do need roads for large vehicles because we can't magically transport bulk goods from warehouses into local shops, but there's probably a better solution than what exists currently in most American cities. There could maybe be better bifurcation on the use of roads that still allows safe pedestrian/bicycle traffic. I also do think that parking lots are a waste of space, at least the surface level ones. I just don't know that I agree that it's a low hanging fruit like these people do. You can't get rid of them until you alleviate the need for them. You can't do that until you make changes in policy through the government or a broad change in requirements for commuting in the first place, like expanding WFH. Change the zoning laws.

inferiorhuman 4y ago

Krisjohn 4y ago

If the government wants to solve the housing affordability crisis it needs to eliminate policies that increase house prices and keep wages low, then it needs to build houses and increase minimum wage. Everything else is a distraction.

inferiorhuman 4y ago
Building parking is expensive, eliminating parking minimums will reduce the cost of building out new housing.

sys_64738 4y ago

It also means more houses closer together which I don't really want. I want to be far from my neighbors and even a wave is hard to spot from the distance. I'll keep my car, thanks very much.