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America has paid a steep price for parking

101 points by jbrins1 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
josephcsible 3y ago
> More square footage is dedicated to parking each car than to housing each person. 9' by 18' (162 sq ft.) is on the large end of parking space sizes. A couple living in a 400 sq ft. tiny house doesn't even make that true, and most houses aren't tiny houses. For more normal 2000 sq ft. houses, you'd need an average of more than 12 people living in each one to make it true.
- afiori 3y ago
  I suspect that they are counting the parking surface nationwide to living space surface nationwide, not just domestic parking. For example this would include all the parking spaces at schools, offices, walmarts, etc.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    So when you go to work, they count the parking space there towards the square footage for your car, but not your office there towards the square footage for you? And when you stay at a hotel, they're counting the hotel's parking space towards the square footage for your car but not the hotel room towards the square footage for you? It's unfair and absurd to only count the square footage for you where you live, but to count the square footage for your car everywhere you ever drive it to.
    - mym1990 3y ago
      That is the whole POINT. You don't pick up your house and move it every time you need to go to a grocery store(unless you live in your car, which many do), but that is exactly what you do with a vehicle. This means that the infrastructure needed to support the vehicle is actually massively more extensive than just the vehicle, leaving a footprint that is much bigger than just the car, and impacts almost all facets of day to day life.
      - josephcsible 3y ago
        > You don't pick up your house and move it every time you need to go to a grocery store You are to your house as your car is to your driveway. You don't dig up your driveway and bring it with you every time you drive somewhere.
        mym1990 3y ago
        You just argued against yourself though, because in a theoretical sense that is exactly what you do. If you don't have a parking space available at the location you are going to, a "public driveway" so to speak, you are not able to leave the car there. Now you could make a similar point about short term living situations like hotels, but I would imagine that the number of people who regularly stay in hotels is much lower than the number of people who own and operate a vehicle regularly.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        The point is that it's not any different than the living space itself. If you go from home to work, you need an office to be in while you're there in addition to a parking space, and for that time both your home and the parking space at your home are empty. But they're counting the parking space at the office and not the office space there.
        orwin 3y ago
        I don't need a parking space at my office. Never needed one.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        So either you park your car at the train station, and then the train station needs a parking space for you and according to this math it still counts as another one even if it's outside the city. Or you live within walking distance of mass transit, which most people can't because there isn't enough relevant land zoned for that kind of high density development for everyone to live in even if they wanted to. But I'll do you one better. If you work from home you don't need the parking space or the office space.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Not only that, the total nationwide is essentially meaningless because of how many parking spaces there are in suburban areas where zoning prohibits the land from being used for much else or rural areas where the land isn't that scarce. Converting parking spaces into bigger lawns doesn't get you any more housing.
      - shagmin 3y ago
        It's pretty marginal but there are a couple instances where I'm at that are slowly being addressed, where some really large, poorly located parking lots are making some areas more flood prone and holding up development in their vicinity.
    - bena 3y ago
      Even if you were to do that, parking has a larger footprint than habitation. Or whatever you want to call existing in a space. For example, if I go to Chipotle for lunch, I will go and park my car, go inside, get in line, order, blah. My car, and everyone else's car will take up 9x18 units. If it's busy, you could have a line 10 to 15 people deep. That's 1620 sq ft of parking for people who will be occupying about 360 sq ft on the inside. (Assuming 10 people all taking up a 6x6 block).
    - afiori 3y ago
      I feel that there is a categoric misunderstanding here: there is no "natural" conversion rate between "parking footage" and "abitable footage", the claim from the book is just saying "There are a lot of parking! More than you think! The parking surface is bigger than the abitable surface", it is about conveying a sense of scale not about "the ratio is 1.2 but should be 0.7". As you have pointed out it could also means "The car in your driveway has 11 theorethical empty parking spots built for it, maybe there is an overallocation of resources" Some relevant resource might be: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6... from Not Just Bikes based on research from Strongtowns
  - stonedge 3y ago
    This is what the data is based on. I've read the book and it's totaling all square footage in the country devoted to parking lots vs. housing. Essentially after the math, each car has more than just one space allocated to it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- michael1999 3y ago
  Not really. An F150 is 8' wide to the mirror, and most people like to open the door. And they are 17.5' long, and nobody likes to touch the wall with their nose. If anything that's an understatement of the space used. Unless you have valets/robots packing the cars into solid blocks, every single parking space needs a full driveway beside to enter/exit, and that driveway needs to be wide enough to accommodate the turning radius during parking. For the F150, that's another 150sqft or so.
  - eropple 3y ago
    "Most people like to open the door" is a beautiful line.
    - iso1631 3y ago
      Some don't. Look at the iconic reveal of the Delorian in Back to the Future.
      - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
        *DeLorean
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    I agree with you that 9'x18' is smaller than ideal. I just meant it's on the large side of what we actually have today.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Moreover, that's assuming that every car is a Ford F150. But what happens in practice is that the F150 gets parked next to a Toyota Corolla which is less than 6' wide and thereby has room to open the doors by extending them into the adjacent space.
    - michael1999 3y ago
      Not really if you include the driveway too. A parking spot without access in/out is useless. When an aisle has parking both sides, this space is shared, so only 50% allocated to each space. But if you ever see an aisle with parking on only one side, you might be surprised how much more room cars need to get in/out. Even with shared aisles, it is ~100sqft. 300sqft for a parking spot really is a bare minimum. And that's before you start adding up common spaces like ramps, etc.
- thelastgallon 3y ago
  US has 2 billion parking spots. A car also needs room to maneuver into the spot, this makes the space 2 - 3x than just the area required to park a car.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    But the maneuvering space for your driveway is the road, which was there anyway.
    - ajuc 3y ago
      Most of the road is only there because people use cars instead of public transport. Keep 2 lanes as necessary,the remaining lanes should be divided among the cars as wasted space caused by them.
      - josephcsible 3y ago
        > Most of the road is only there because people use cars instead of public transport. Buses need roads too, and train tracks are just as big as roads but less versatile.
        rootusrootus 3y ago
        > Buses need roads too And delivery vehicles, emergency vehicles, etc. We certainly had roads before we had cars.
        goosedragons 3y ago
        Sure. Were they as wide? Do we need 4 lane stroads if most commuters moved to bicycles, public transit or walking?
        rootusrootus 3y ago
        There are considerably more people today than there were before cars, so it's hard to say how wide the roads would need to be if we could make bicycles, public transit, and walking a functional equivalent for cars.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  There are more than one parking spot per car. One at home, one at work, one at the grocery store, one at the cafe. Some of those are shared, but it is entirely believable that we have more paved parking than we have housing
  - iso1631 3y ago
    https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parking-spaces-for-every-car-heres-how-cities-are-rethinking-that-land https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parki... "America has eight parking spaces for every car. Here’s how cities are rethinking that land" Wow.
    - afiori 3y ago
      It is important to note that car usage an extra parking are strongly correlated as any car is either parked or travelling. If you add more cars without adding at least 2 parking spaces per car you almost surely get less usage or cars stuck in traffic. Car infrastructure is very expensive, see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    If you're only counting the square footage of people's homes rather than of everywhere they go, then you should also only count the square footage of their driveways rather than of everywhere they park their cars.
    - afiori 3y ago
      This is only a fair comparison if you assume that cars are as important as people and deserve half of the space for everithing else in the world.
  - NumberWangMan 3y ago
    Interestingly, one practical tactic for increasing walkability in cities is to focus on increasing the re-usability of parking. People who live in an apartment and drive to work don't need their parking space during the day, so sometimes you can have an apartment and an office share parking spaces, in the middle of a city. Obviously there's nowhere near 100% overlap, but if you can get to a situation where you only need 150% as much parking instead of of 200%, that's great.
- seadan83 3y ago
  Many building/land-use codes require one parking space per expected adult occupant. So we can multiply by two. Further, we are counting just parking at the residence, let alone the combined shared parking elsewhere. Plenty of roads has as much parking on either side as there is actual roadway
- ChrisRackauckas 3y ago
  You're missing big box stores like Walmart which each have tens of thousands of square feet of parking around them for every car which could potentially show up. Many times, these giant parking lots are mandated by law, so each grocery store has a parking lot, and each school has a parking lot. When you total it up, there are hundreds of places you could theoretically park your car, mostly mandated by law to exist. It makes all infrastructure bigger: you house is further from the store because you have to drive past a bunch of parking lots. If you go to a place that isn't driving dependent and you'll see that the main factor for "better walkability" is namely "places are a few miles closer because you don't have to walk through 20 parking lots to get there". It's pretty eye opening.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    "If you go to a place that isn't driving dependent and you'll see that the main factor for "better walkability" is namely "places are a few miles closer because you don't have to walk through 20 parking lots to get there"." That's not really the main factor. I would say the main factor is medium to high density, mixed use areas that have business friendly regulations and/or wealthy residents/tourists. There aren't tons of large parking lots in west Philly, but I wouldn't give it a high walkability score given all the vacancies (where are you going to walk to?) and safety concerns (both in infrastructure and crime terms).
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - afiori 3y ago
      The aneddotical example of when it can be the main factor is the famous Houston In The 70' photo: https://i.redd.it/rdh7zsqvz5q01.jpg https://i.redd.it/rdh7zsqvz5q01.jpg
      - giantg2 3y ago
        Still, not really. Even going with that picture, this is still a better description "medium to high density, mixed use areas that have business friendly regulations and/or wealthy residents/tourists.", as one could get rid of the parking lots, but that wouldn't make it necessarily better unless it's also mixed zoning (eg if those are all office buildings, you still have to drive to get to a restaurant, grocery, etc).
- bena 3y ago
  I have two parking spots that are essentially dedicated to my car. At work* and at home. I don't have to worry about parking at either of those spots. Ever. Everywhere I go out has parking. I need to pick something up at the hardware store and grocery store today. I'm not worried about the parking at either. Usually, there's plenty of empty spots at most locations I'll drive to. The few times I can't find a parking spot is around meal times at places with already limited parking. And I just remembered, I have a parking pass for a local stadium for games during that sport's season. That's another dedicated spot for my car. I believe right now, both stadiums have empty parking lots. I drive by a minor league baseball field every morning that has an empty lot. It's not just about the parking at one place, it's about all the places created so you can park your car. Parking has a lot of slack built into it. Most places have more square footage dedicated to parking than to the structure itself. *I don't have an assigned parking spot or anything like that, it's just that we have a private lot only for use of employees. So there's always going to be a spot somewhere for me.
- giantg2 3y ago
  I can see it being true given all the places that have large lots. Although I'm not sure what the author's point is by using that comparison, aside from being an emotional hook. The resources, needs/wants, etc for these are quite different. Same thing for the statement about 3-car garages vs 1 bedroom apartments - it mostly comes down to preferences and how those manifest in the market, politics, and other aspects of life.
- bloak 3y ago
  Just in case anyone's interested, in the UK a parking space is usually 2.4 x 4.8 metres, with 6 metres between the double rows of cars for manoeuvring. (It's not a law, as far as I know, but those dimensions are mentioned in lots of quasi-official recommendations.) That works out, in the limit, for a very large car park, as an area per parking space of 18.72 square metres, which is just over 201.5 square feet.
thegrim33 3y ago
[flagged]
- yamazakiwi 3y ago
  What do you disagree with? What is the opposing viewpoint?
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    The opposing viewpoint is that all the downsides that predominantly harm city living people are perfectly fine for the half of the country that does not live in a city to still occasionally go enjoy city stuff and have that parking be available. They don't seem to understand that reducing cars in cities and dense areas doesn't stop you from driving your lifted 19 foot long bro truck in the suburbs.
linusg789 3y ago
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/sn6SX https://ghostarchive.org/archive/sn6SX
tivert 3y ago
And the alternate universe version of this clickbait: "America has paid a steep price in time for devoting too little space to storing cars," or "Our transportation choices have boxed Americans into living in sardine cans. We need new personal transportation infrastructure."
- BlargMcLarg 3y ago
  Americans don't seem to live in sardine cans compared to the world. They mostly seem to transport themselves and work in sardine cans, though. Not very different from the remainder of the developed world, where people do live in sardine cans primarily.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Americans don't seem to live in sardine cans compared to the world. They mostly seem to transport themselves and work in sardine cans, though. Not very different from the remainder of the developed world, where people do live in sardine cans primarily. You misunderstand. It's an alternate universe headline.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - BlargMcLarg 3y ago
      Fair enough, didn't interpret the second line as also being an alternative universe.
      - tivert 3y ago
        I edited it to make that clearer.
- abeppu 3y ago
  I'm not sure this claim makes sense. Yes, _if you're committed to driving everywhere_, then fewer parking spaces when you arrive at your destination may make you spend time looking for parking. But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together. In our universe, where most businesses are surrounded by large parking lots, whole cities get sprawled out and everyone's travel times are inflated (regardless of mode of travel).
Ekaros 3y ago
I wonder if you calculated area for sidewalks, corridors in offices and public spaces, maybe public parks. How much wasted space is there dedicated to people to walk or stand in?
- tivert 3y ago
  > I wonder if you calculated area for sidewalks, corridors in offices and public spaces, maybe public parks. How much wasted space is there dedicated to people to walk or stand in? How much space have we wasted on transportation infrastructure, period? How many one-bedroom apartments could we build in cities, if there was no way to get in or out of them? I think that's an important question that The Atlantic magazine needs to commission a long article about. Preferably one written in a self-righteous, judgemental tone.
- ajuc 3y ago
  Much less. You can verify it by checking population density in American vs European cities. That's despite the fact European cities usually don't build as high as American ones.
- amflare 3y ago
  brb; gonna found a startup to develop a JIT-sidewalk.
thelastgallon 3y ago
Also see: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/parking-lots-eat-american-cities/ https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/parking-lots-eat-american-... HN discussion (333 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35395060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35395060
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  It's interesting to read that discussion from a couple months ago. There are comments that are literally being cut & paste from each discussion to the next, that's how often this exact same car-hating discussion plays out on HN. At this point we could just turn ChatGPT loose and it could probably generate the entire discussion.
shrubble 3y ago
Starting the article with the false equivalence of housing space to parking space is ridiculous. Housing requires a massive amount of ancillary infrastructure such as power, heat, plumbing/sewer, telecom etc. Parking requires either gravel or gravel with asphalt on top. Second, what happened in e.g. Moscow once cars were readily available and affordable? ... People who already had an advanced metro system, trains etc... still bought them! Why?
- kiba 3y ago
  Starting the article with the false equivalence of housing space to parking space is ridiculous. Housing requires a massive amount of ancillary infrastructure such as power, heat, plumbing/sewer, telecom etc. So do houses built further away. Do we want houses to be more close or not? What about corner shops? Second, what happened in e.g. Moscow once cars were readily available and affordable? ... People who already had an advanced metro system, trains etc... still bought them! Why? Cars happen when systems are built for them.
  - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    No, I do not want to live any closer to anyone else. I want a house with a yard to plant the seeds I want to grow and do the things I want to do. The quality of the fruit at even upscale places like Central Market is absolute dogshit compared to what I can grow in my backyard. Nobody who has only ever had figs from a market or grocery store has ever eaten a good fig. I do not want to live in a sad concrete box in a city somewhere, and my quality of life matters more to me than someone else's communal pipe dreams. I had a rural upbringing. Cities are nice to visit but they give me anxiety.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Do you miss that nobody is suggesting cars should be banned from rural communities?
    - orwin 3y ago
      The solution is obvious then. Keep the same system everywhere and especially in rural areas, but forbid cars in cities. People who like living in cities don't like cars. People living outside like them. It's quite easy to enforce tbh.
dokem 3y ago
[flagged]
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
This seems to be like looking at a CPU die and commenting how inefficient it is to have so many on die transistors devoted to cache. The truth is you need a place to put people (and data in the CPU world) while they are going about their lives and moving from place to place. To move from place to place, it seems the average American prefers their car, since it generally runs on their timetable, and they do not have to share personal space with strangers. And it is not just an American thing. If you look at developing countries like India and China, car ownership and usage is exploding as people grow wealthier.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  Even in Europe, cars are very prevalent. It cannot simply be a conspiracy by American car companies to force people to want private transportation.
  - njarboe 3y ago
    Go where you want (99.99% of places where there is a building there is road), when you want and carry with you 0 to 80,000lbs of stuff at a mile a minute. People who are into doing stuff and going places like that. Freedom, as they say.
    - brailsafe 3y ago
      Total freedom 100% of the time, except when anyone needs to get to roughly the same place within a 2 hour window of anyone else going in approximately the same direction.
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    The fact is that until somewhat recently cars were very inexpensive compared to the income of most Americans. Cars in Europe are a bit more expensive, and a lot more expensive in the third world. But in everywhere we always saw the same thing, as soon as people could buy a car, they would buy one. And once someone has a car, they would also tend to move further to bigger places. Most people outside HN bubble like cars and their convenience.
GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
I always wondered if it was possible for a company to just buy up a bunch of land and develop it however they wanted. If I recall, Google wanted to purchase land north of the 101 in Mountain View and put a giant bubble over the entire thing [1]. Not that I particularly trust Google to do a great job, but interesting thought experiment nonetheless. [1] - https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/02/23/google-revises-mountain-view-plans-glass-bubble-is.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/02/23/google-r...
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  Planned communities are definitely a thing, and have been tried many times. As I recall, they mostly end up as failures. It's difficult to design a utopia and have many other people than yourself agree.
- toast0 3y ago
  Yeah kind of, but you have the most freedom when you do it in the middle of nowhere; Disney had a wide berth in Florida for example. It's pretty hard to do such things in already built-up areas.
- chucksta 3y ago
  There is a pretty big negative stigma from the early 1900s IE Coal company towns and Fordlandia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-company-town/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-company-town/
- prometheus76 3y ago
  Here's the model from coal "company towns" in the late 1800s/early 1900s: build town close to mine claim, far from any other town. Build company store in town. Fill it with necessities with huge markups. Offer credit for store items to employees. On payday (monthly), all credit owed to company store is taken from wages before you are given a paycheck. BTW, employees don't get paid an hourly rate. They get paid by how much coal they mine, and the company used fake weights when measuring how much coal you loaded each day to make it look like you loaded less than you did. That's the whole scenario behind the song "Sixteen Tons". "Load sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go. I owe my life to the company store."
dghughes 3y ago
Parking spaces seem to be tiny these days. In the 1970s Grandmother drive a Ford Torino it was 17 feet long and over 6 feet wide. The doors were also quite big. It was actually a typical car not unusually big for the time. A Toyota Camry is about 16' x 6 feet but it seems to be so much smaller like 3 feet rather than 1 foot. I think it felt different in the 1970s because the parking spaces were bigger.
- sofixa 3y ago
  I'm fairly sure it's the opposite, with some small exceptions car have absolutely gotten bigger than before. https://www.carsized.com https://www.carsized.com is a fun resource to visualise the size evolution - take a far model and see how it's gotten bigger over the years.
- brailsafe 3y ago
  I just rented a Camry, and while it seemed alright, it felt absolutely massive.
jmclnx 3y ago
Me, I would love to see cars disappear tomorrow, but we have issues that is feeding each other, keeping transportation in the US static. Public transportation in the US is pretty much non-existent, except maybe in and around New York City. In the area where I use to live, public transportation now is rather dangerous to the people using it. I rode a bicycle to work for and lite errands for more than 30 years, and am probably still alive because of that. But I have been hit by cars more times then I can count (no serious injuries). And I was in rather bicycle friendly area. I spent some time in the Detroit area 15 years ago, the area I was in, bicycling there is a form of suicide. As I said before, Montreal, to me, is a bicycle commuter paradise. So what can people do in the US ? I believe right now, the only way out of this automobile mess is to raise gas prices to $10 per Gallon. Then people and the Government may start changing, otherwise we are driving straight into a worldwide catastrophe.
- beepbopboopp 3y ago
  Please for the love of god stop with the "public transportation is dangerous" narrative. The numbers dont bare it out at all. The same goes for an increase in violent crime in most cities (unless your base case is COVID).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - h43k3r 3y ago
    Public transportation is not dangerous but cycling on roads made for cars is.
    - ajuc 3y ago
      Cycling is quite safe. Cars are dangerous.
  - 908B64B197 3y ago
    Public transit is extremely safe if you withhold crime stats and footage as not to incentivize "racist stereotypes" (whatever that means). [0] [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/bart-withholding-surveillance-videos-of-crime-to-avoid-stereotypes/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/bart-withholding-s...
penguin_booze 3y ago
99pi had a recent related episode: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/paved-paradise/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/paved-paradise/.
jimt1234 3y ago
One thing I've been encouraged by in the last 5-or-so years is parking lots getting covered by solar panels. All the local school parking lots in my area are covered by solar panels now. Most of the Walmarts. Most of the hospitals. And I recall Disney is/was covering their parking lots with solar panels, too. I realize this isn't necessarily a solution to parking lot sprawl, but I like to think it's taking a bad situation and getting at least something positive from it.

101 points by jbrins1 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

> More square footage is dedicated to parking each car than to housing each person. 9' by 18' (162 sq ft.) is on the large end of parking space sizes. A couple living in a 400 sq ft. tiny house doesn't even make that true, and most houses aren't tiny houses. For more normal 2000 sq ft. houses, you'd need an average of more than 12 people living in each one to make it true.

afiori 3y ago
I suspect that they are counting the parking surface nationwide to living space surface nationwide, not just domestic parking. For example this would include all the parking spaces at schools, offices, walmarts, etc.
- josephcsible 3y ago
  So when you go to work, they count the parking space there towards the square footage for your car, but not your office there towards the square footage for you? And when you stay at a hotel, they're counting the hotel's parking space towards the square footage for your car but not the hotel room towards the square footage for you? It's unfair and absurd to only count the square footage for you where you live, but to count the square footage for your car everywhere you ever drive it to.
  - mym1990 3y ago
    That is the whole POINT. You don't pick up your house and move it every time you need to go to a grocery store(unless you live in your car, which many do), but that is exactly what you do with a vehicle. This means that the infrastructure needed to support the vehicle is actually massively more extensive than just the vehicle, leaving a footprint that is much bigger than just the car, and impacts almost all facets of day to day life.
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      > You don't pick up your house and move it every time you need to go to a grocery store You are to your house as your car is to your driveway. You don't dig up your driveway and bring it with you every time you drive somewhere.
      - mym1990 3y ago
        You just argued against yourself though, because in a theoretical sense that is exactly what you do. If you don't have a parking space available at the location you are going to, a "public driveway" so to speak, you are not able to leave the car there. Now you could make a similar point about short term living situations like hotels, but I would imagine that the number of people who regularly stay in hotels is much lower than the number of people who own and operate a vehicle regularly.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        The point is that it's not any different than the living space itself. If you go from home to work, you need an office to be in while you're there in addition to a parking space, and for that time both your home and the parking space at your home are empty. But they're counting the parking space at the office and not the office space there.
        orwin 3y ago
        I don't need a parking space at my office. Never needed one.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        So either you park your car at the train station, and then the train station needs a parking space for you and according to this math it still counts as another one even if it's outside the city. Or you live within walking distance of mass transit, which most people can't because there isn't enough relevant land zoned for that kind of high density development for everyone to live in even if they wanted to. But I'll do you one better. If you work from home you don't need the parking space or the office space.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Not only that, the total nationwide is essentially meaningless because of how many parking spaces there are in suburban areas where zoning prohibits the land from being used for much else or rural areas where the land isn't that scarce. Converting parking spaces into bigger lawns doesn't get you any more housing.
    - shagmin 3y ago
      It's pretty marginal but there are a couple instances where I'm at that are slowly being addressed, where some really large, poorly located parking lots are making some areas more flood prone and holding up development in their vicinity.
  - bena 3y ago
    Even if you were to do that, parking has a larger footprint than habitation. Or whatever you want to call existing in a space. For example, if I go to Chipotle for lunch, I will go and park my car, go inside, get in line, order, blah. My car, and everyone else's car will take up 9x18 units. If it's busy, you could have a line 10 to 15 people deep. That's 1620 sq ft of parking for people who will be occupying about 360 sq ft on the inside. (Assuming 10 people all taking up a 6x6 block).
  - afiori 3y ago
    I feel that there is a categoric misunderstanding here: there is no "natural" conversion rate between "parking footage" and "abitable footage", the claim from the book is just saying "There are a lot of parking! More than you think! The parking surface is bigger than the abitable surface", it is about conveying a sense of scale not about "the ratio is 1.2 but should be 0.7". As you have pointed out it could also means "The car in your driveway has 11 theorethical empty parking spots built for it, maybe there is an overallocation of resources" Some relevant resource might be: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6... from Not Just Bikes based on research from Strongtowns
- stonedge 3y ago
  This is what the data is based on. I've read the book and it's totaling all square footage in the country devoted to parking lots vs. housing. Essentially after the math, each car has more than just one space allocated to it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
michael1999 3y ago
Not really. An F150 is 8' wide to the mirror, and most people like to open the door. And they are 17.5' long, and nobody likes to touch the wall with their nose. If anything that's an understatement of the space used. Unless you have valets/robots packing the cars into solid blocks, every single parking space needs a full driveway beside to enter/exit, and that driveway needs to be wide enough to accommodate the turning radius during parking. For the F150, that's another 150sqft or so.
- eropple 3y ago
  "Most people like to open the door" is a beautiful line.
  - iso1631 3y ago
    Some don't. Look at the iconic reveal of the Delorian in Back to the Future.
    - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
      *DeLorean
- josephcsible 3y ago
  I agree with you that 9'x18' is smaller than ideal. I just meant it's on the large side of what we actually have today.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Moreover, that's assuming that every car is a Ford F150. But what happens in practice is that the F150 gets parked next to a Toyota Corolla which is less than 6' wide and thereby has room to open the doors by extending them into the adjacent space.
  - michael1999 3y ago
    Not really if you include the driveway too. A parking spot without access in/out is useless. When an aisle has parking both sides, this space is shared, so only 50% allocated to each space. But if you ever see an aisle with parking on only one side, you might be surprised how much more room cars need to get in/out. Even with shared aisles, it is ~100sqft. 300sqft for a parking spot really is a bare minimum. And that's before you start adding up common spaces like ramps, etc.
thelastgallon 3y ago
US has 2 billion parking spots. A car also needs room to maneuver into the spot, this makes the space 2 - 3x than just the area required to park a car.
- josephcsible 3y ago
  But the maneuvering space for your driveway is the road, which was there anyway.
  - ajuc 3y ago
    Most of the road is only there because people use cars instead of public transport. Keep 2 lanes as necessary,the remaining lanes should be divided among the cars as wasted space caused by them.
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      > Most of the road is only there because people use cars instead of public transport. Buses need roads too, and train tracks are just as big as roads but less versatile.
      - rootusrootus 3y ago
        > Buses need roads too And delivery vehicles, emergency vehicles, etc. We certainly had roads before we had cars.
        goosedragons 3y ago
        Sure. Were they as wide? Do we need 4 lane stroads if most commuters moved to bicycles, public transit or walking?
        rootusrootus 3y ago
        There are considerably more people today than there were before cars, so it's hard to say how wide the roads would need to be if we could make bicycles, public transit, and walking a functional equivalent for cars.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
There are more than one parking spot per car. One at home, one at work, one at the grocery store, one at the cafe. Some of those are shared, but it is entirely believable that we have more paved parking than we have housing
- iso1631 3y ago
  https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parking-spaces-for-every-car-heres-how-cities-are-rethinking-that-land https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parki... "America has eight parking spaces for every car. Here’s how cities are rethinking that land" Wow.
  - afiori 3y ago
    It is important to note that car usage an extra parking are strongly correlated as any car is either parked or travelling. If you add more cars without adding at least 2 parking spaces per car you almost surely get less usage or cars stuck in traffic. Car infrastructure is very expensive, see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...
- josephcsible 3y ago
  If you're only counting the square footage of people's homes rather than of everywhere they go, then you should also only count the square footage of their driveways rather than of everywhere they park their cars.
  - afiori 3y ago
    This is only a fair comparison if you assume that cars are as important as people and deserve half of the space for everithing else in the world.
- NumberWangMan 3y ago
  Interestingly, one practical tactic for increasing walkability in cities is to focus on increasing the re-usability of parking. People who live in an apartment and drive to work don't need their parking space during the day, so sometimes you can have an apartment and an office share parking spaces, in the middle of a city. Obviously there's nowhere near 100% overlap, but if you can get to a situation where you only need 150% as much parking instead of of 200%, that's great.
seadan83 3y ago
Many building/land-use codes require one parking space per expected adult occupant. So we can multiply by two. Further, we are counting just parking at the residence, let alone the combined shared parking elsewhere. Plenty of roads has as much parking on either side as there is actual roadway
ChrisRackauckas 3y ago
You're missing big box stores like Walmart which each have tens of thousands of square feet of parking around them for every car which could potentially show up. Many times, these giant parking lots are mandated by law, so each grocery store has a parking lot, and each school has a parking lot. When you total it up, there are hundreds of places you could theoretically park your car, mostly mandated by law to exist. It makes all infrastructure bigger: you house is further from the store because you have to drive past a bunch of parking lots. If you go to a place that isn't driving dependent and you'll see that the main factor for "better walkability" is namely "places are a few miles closer because you don't have to walk through 20 parking lots to get there". It's pretty eye opening.
- giantg2 3y ago
  "If you go to a place that isn't driving dependent and you'll see that the main factor for "better walkability" is namely "places are a few miles closer because you don't have to walk through 20 parking lots to get there"." That's not really the main factor. I would say the main factor is medium to high density, mixed use areas that have business friendly regulations and/or wealthy residents/tourists. There aren't tons of large parking lots in west Philly, but I wouldn't give it a high walkability score given all the vacancies (where are you going to walk to?) and safety concerns (both in infrastructure and crime terms).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - afiori 3y ago
    The aneddotical example of when it can be the main factor is the famous Houston In The 70' photo: https://i.redd.it/rdh7zsqvz5q01.jpg https://i.redd.it/rdh7zsqvz5q01.jpg
    - giantg2 3y ago
      Still, not really. Even going with that picture, this is still a better description "medium to high density, mixed use areas that have business friendly regulations and/or wealthy residents/tourists.", as one could get rid of the parking lots, but that wouldn't make it necessarily better unless it's also mixed zoning (eg if those are all office buildings, you still have to drive to get to a restaurant, grocery, etc).
bena 3y ago
I have two parking spots that are essentially dedicated to my car. At work* and at home. I don't have to worry about parking at either of those spots. Ever. Everywhere I go out has parking. I need to pick something up at the hardware store and grocery store today. I'm not worried about the parking at either. Usually, there's plenty of empty spots at most locations I'll drive to. The few times I can't find a parking spot is around meal times at places with already limited parking. And I just remembered, I have a parking pass for a local stadium for games during that sport's season. That's another dedicated spot for my car. I believe right now, both stadiums have empty parking lots. I drive by a minor league baseball field every morning that has an empty lot. It's not just about the parking at one place, it's about all the places created so you can park your car. Parking has a lot of slack built into it. Most places have more square footage dedicated to parking than to the structure itself. *I don't have an assigned parking spot or anything like that, it's just that we have a private lot only for use of employees. So there's always going to be a spot somewhere for me.
giantg2 3y ago
I can see it being true given all the places that have large lots. Although I'm not sure what the author's point is by using that comparison, aside from being an emotional hook. The resources, needs/wants, etc for these are quite different. Same thing for the statement about 3-car garages vs 1 bedroom apartments - it mostly comes down to preferences and how those manifest in the market, politics, and other aspects of life.
bloak 3y ago
Just in case anyone's interested, in the UK a parking space is usually 2.4 x 4.8 metres, with 6 metres between the double rows of cars for manoeuvring. (It's not a law, as far as I know, but those dimensions are mentioned in lots of quasi-official recommendations.) That works out, in the limit, for a very large car park, as an area per parking space of 18.72 square metres, which is just over 201.5 square feet.

thegrim33 3y ago

[flagged]

yamazakiwi 3y ago
What do you disagree with? What is the opposing viewpoint?
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  The opposing viewpoint is that all the downsides that predominantly harm city living people are perfectly fine for the half of the country that does not live in a city to still occasionally go enjoy city stuff and have that parking be available. They don't seem to understand that reducing cars in cities and dense areas doesn't stop you from driving your lifted 19 foot long bro truck in the suburbs.

linusg789 3y ago

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/sn6SX https://ghostarchive.org/archive/sn6SX

tivert 3y ago

And the alternate universe version of this clickbait: "America has paid a steep price in time for devoting too little space to storing cars," or "Our transportation choices have boxed Americans into living in sardine cans. We need new personal transportation infrastructure."

BlargMcLarg 3y ago
Americans don't seem to live in sardine cans compared to the world. They mostly seem to transport themselves and work in sardine cans, though. Not very different from the remainder of the developed world, where people do live in sardine cans primarily.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Americans don't seem to live in sardine cans compared to the world. They mostly seem to transport themselves and work in sardine cans, though. Not very different from the remainder of the developed world, where people do live in sardine cans primarily. You misunderstand. It's an alternate universe headline.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - BlargMcLarg 3y ago
    Fair enough, didn't interpret the second line as also being an alternative universe.
    - tivert 3y ago
      I edited it to make that clearer.
abeppu 3y ago
I'm not sure this claim makes sense. Yes, _if you're committed to driving everywhere_, then fewer parking spaces when you arrive at your destination may make you spend time looking for parking. But in the alternate world where we didn't design for cars first, you'd be more used to other forms of transit, and a lot of things would be closer together. In our universe, where most businesses are surrounded by large parking lots, whole cities get sprawled out and everyone's travel times are inflated (regardless of mode of travel).

Ekaros 3y ago

I wonder if you calculated area for sidewalks, corridors in offices and public spaces, maybe public parks. How much wasted space is there dedicated to people to walk or stand in?

tivert 3y ago
> I wonder if you calculated area for sidewalks, corridors in offices and public spaces, maybe public parks. How much wasted space is there dedicated to people to walk or stand in? How much space have we wasted on transportation infrastructure, period? How many one-bedroom apartments could we build in cities, if there was no way to get in or out of them? I think that's an important question that The Atlantic magazine needs to commission a long article about. Preferably one written in a self-righteous, judgemental tone.
ajuc 3y ago
Much less. You can verify it by checking population density in American vs European cities. That's despite the fact European cities usually don't build as high as American ones.
amflare 3y ago
brb; gonna found a startup to develop a JIT-sidewalk.

thelastgallon 3y ago

Also see: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/parking-lots-eat-american-cities/ https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/parking-lots-eat-american-... HN discussion (333 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35395060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35395060

rootusrootus 3y ago
It's interesting to read that discussion from a couple months ago. There are comments that are literally being cut & paste from each discussion to the next, that's how often this exact same car-hating discussion plays out on HN. At this point we could just turn ChatGPT loose and it could probably generate the entire discussion.

shrubble 3y ago

Starting the article with the false equivalence of housing space to parking space is ridiculous. Housing requires a massive amount of ancillary infrastructure such as power, heat, plumbing/sewer, telecom etc. Parking requires either gravel or gravel with asphalt on top. Second, what happened in e.g. Moscow once cars were readily available and affordable? ... People who already had an advanced metro system, trains etc... still bought them! Why?

kiba 3y ago
Starting the article with the false equivalence of housing space to parking space is ridiculous. Housing requires a massive amount of ancillary infrastructure such as power, heat, plumbing/sewer, telecom etc. So do houses built further away. Do we want houses to be more close or not? What about corner shops? Second, what happened in e.g. Moscow once cars were readily available and affordable? ... People who already had an advanced metro system, trains etc... still bought them! Why? Cars happen when systems are built for them.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  No, I do not want to live any closer to anyone else. I want a house with a yard to plant the seeds I want to grow and do the things I want to do. The quality of the fruit at even upscale places like Central Market is absolute dogshit compared to what I can grow in my backyard. Nobody who has only ever had figs from a market or grocery store has ever eaten a good fig. I do not want to live in a sad concrete box in a city somewhere, and my quality of life matters more to me than someone else's communal pipe dreams. I had a rural upbringing. Cities are nice to visit but they give me anxiety.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Do you miss that nobody is suggesting cars should be banned from rural communities?
  - orwin 3y ago
    The solution is obvious then. Keep the same system everywhere and especially in rural areas, but forbid cars in cities. People who like living in cities don't like cars. People living outside like them. It's quite easy to enforce tbh.

dokem 3y ago

[flagged]

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

This seems to be like looking at a CPU die and commenting how inefficient it is to have so many on die transistors devoted to cache. The truth is you need a place to put people (and data in the CPU world) while they are going about their lives and moving from place to place. To move from place to place, it seems the average American prefers their car, since it generally runs on their timetable, and they do not have to share personal space with strangers. And it is not just an American thing. If you look at developing countries like India and China, car ownership and usage is exploding as people grow wealthier.

rootusrootus 3y ago
Even in Europe, cars are very prevalent. It cannot simply be a conspiracy by American car companies to force people to want private transportation.
- njarboe 3y ago
  Go where you want (99.99% of places where there is a building there is road), when you want and carry with you 0 to 80,000lbs of stuff at a mile a minute. People who are into doing stuff and going places like that. Freedom, as they say.
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    Total freedom 100% of the time, except when anyone needs to get to roughly the same place within a 2 hour window of anyone else going in approximately the same direction.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  The fact is that until somewhat recently cars were very inexpensive compared to the income of most Americans. Cars in Europe are a bit more expensive, and a lot more expensive in the third world. But in everywhere we always saw the same thing, as soon as people could buy a car, they would buy one. And once someone has a car, they would also tend to move further to bigger places. Most people outside HN bubble like cars and their convenience.

GaryNumanVevo 3y ago

I always wondered if it was possible for a company to just buy up a bunch of land and develop it however they wanted. If I recall, Google wanted to purchase land north of the 101 in Mountain View and put a giant bubble over the entire thing [1]. Not that I particularly trust Google to do a great job, but interesting thought experiment nonetheless. [1] - https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/02/23/google-revises-mountain-view-plans-glass-bubble-is.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/02/23/google-r...

rootusrootus 3y ago
Planned communities are definitely a thing, and have been tried many times. As I recall, they mostly end up as failures. It's difficult to design a utopia and have many other people than yourself agree.
toast0 3y ago
Yeah kind of, but you have the most freedom when you do it in the middle of nowhere; Disney had a wide berth in Florida for example. It's pretty hard to do such things in already built-up areas.
chucksta 3y ago
There is a pretty big negative stigma from the early 1900s IE Coal company towns and Fordlandia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-company-town/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-company-town/
prometheus76 3y ago
Here's the model from coal "company towns" in the late 1800s/early 1900s: build town close to mine claim, far from any other town. Build company store in town. Fill it with necessities with huge markups. Offer credit for store items to employees. On payday (monthly), all credit owed to company store is taken from wages before you are given a paycheck. BTW, employees don't get paid an hourly rate. They get paid by how much coal they mine, and the company used fake weights when measuring how much coal you loaded each day to make it look like you loaded less than you did. That's the whole scenario behind the song "Sixteen Tons". "Load sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go. I owe my life to the company store."

dghughes 3y ago

Parking spaces seem to be tiny these days. In the 1970s Grandmother drive a Ford Torino it was 17 feet long and over 6 feet wide. The doors were also quite big. It was actually a typical car not unusually big for the time. A Toyota Camry is about 16' x 6 feet but it seems to be so much smaller like 3 feet rather than 1 foot. I think it felt different in the 1970s because the parking spaces were bigger.

sofixa 3y ago
I'm fairly sure it's the opposite, with some small exceptions car have absolutely gotten bigger than before. https://www.carsized.com https://www.carsized.com is a fun resource to visualise the size evolution - take a far model and see how it's gotten bigger over the years.
brailsafe 3y ago
I just rented a Camry, and while it seemed alright, it felt absolutely massive.

jmclnx 3y ago

Me, I would love to see cars disappear tomorrow, but we have issues that is feeding each other, keeping transportation in the US static. Public transportation in the US is pretty much non-existent, except maybe in and around New York City. In the area where I use to live, public transportation now is rather dangerous to the people using it. I rode a bicycle to work for and lite errands for more than 30 years, and am probably still alive because of that. But I have been hit by cars more times then I can count (no serious injuries). And I was in rather bicycle friendly area. I spent some time in the Detroit area 15 years ago, the area I was in, bicycling there is a form of suicide. As I said before, Montreal, to me, is a bicycle commuter paradise. So what can people do in the US ? I believe right now, the only way out of this automobile mess is to raise gas prices to $10 per Gallon. Then people and the Government may start changing, otherwise we are driving straight into a worldwide catastrophe.

beepbopboopp 3y ago
Please for the love of god stop with the "public transportation is dangerous" narrative. The numbers dont bare it out at all. The same goes for an increase in violent crime in most cities (unless your base case is COVID).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- h43k3r 3y ago
  Public transportation is not dangerous but cycling on roads made for cars is.
  - ajuc 3y ago
    Cycling is quite safe. Cars are dangerous.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  Public transit is extremely safe if you withhold crime stats and footage as not to incentivize "racist stereotypes" (whatever that means). [0] [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/bart-withholding-surveillance-videos-of-crime-to-avoid-stereotypes/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/bart-withholding-s...

penguin_booze 3y ago

99pi had a recent related episode: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/paved-paradise/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/paved-paradise/.

jimt1234 3y ago

One thing I've been encouraged by in the last 5-or-so years is parking lots getting covered by solar panels. All the local school parking lots in my area are covered by solar panels now. Most of the Walmarts. Most of the hospitals. And I recall Disney is/was covering their parking lots with solar panels, too. I realize this isn't necessarily a solution to parking lot sprawl, but I like to think it's taking a bad situation and getting at least something positive from it.