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Often "flexibility" simply becomes providing less parking to make room for more units on a given lot, effectively outsourcing to the surrounding community. I l

Often "flexibility" simply becomes providing less parking to make room for more units on a given lot, effectively outsourcing to the surrounding community. I lived in an area that allowed "senior" developments for 55+ people. As old people are all retired and so do not commute/drive, there were far fewer necessary parking spots and the development was deemed not to increase local traffic. Without the need to commute to work, upgrades to mass transit were deemed unnecessary. Total BS. All the care providers and visiting families ended up parking at the nearby mall. And retired people still drive. They don't commute to work but they don't sit still at home all day either. The whole pack of lies was simply a way to bypass parking regs and squeeze more condos onto the lot to the detriment of the surrounding community.

davidw 2y ago
Malls usually have huge, empty parking lots, so it sounds like it's a win: More people got a home to live in that costs less, and some formerly squandered land was better utilized. And if you start doing other things like legalizing corner stores and neighborhood businesses, rather than designing everything for the automobile Uber alles, maybe some of those people will find they don't need a car. Also, policy changes almost never happen in one nice tidy package where you do all the things at once, like eliminating expensive and arbitrary parking rules, adding a bunch of transit, re-legalizing neighborhood commercial, right-sizing roads, etc... so there are going to be fits and starts and bumps along the way. Still worth doing though.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  To be fair, those mall parking lots were busy at one point in history.
  - davidw 2y ago
    Strong Towns had people take pictures on 'Black Friday' of mall parking lots, just to see. Many of them still had a ton of excess capacity.
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      I meant history like 1993, not history like several months ago.
comte7092 2y ago
So you make the street parking paid. It’s insane that so much land is dedicated to giving people free space to store their personal vehicles. “But that’s unfair!” People can take the bus. “But the bus service isn’t good!” That’s because no one uses the bus, if there’s demand, supply will be added. The biggest determinant of transit use is the availability of parking.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  Try working in care. Try doing home care for maybe five or six different elderly clients every day, each at a random location. If we want to support elderly people we need to provide for the poorly-paid care providers who must bounce around doing that support. Telling them to take the bus is about as effective as telling Amazon to abandon delivery vans in favor of bicycles.
  - amrocha 2y ago
    This edge case that you came up with warrants a car, but is that really the reality of most cars parking in any given community? And honestly, it’s questionable whether it warrants a car too. In Tokyo it would be perfectly fine to do those trips by public transport. My biweekly cleaner gets around by train to all the places she works at. And local delivery companies all use bicycles for last mile delivery. Maybe that’s not viable right now, but I think that’s the point of Donald’s advocacy. By not pricing parking correctly we provide perverse incentives as a society that lead us down a vicious cycle. Free parking means more cars means less transit ridership means we need more free parking, and repeat. This shapes our cities into places that prioritize cars over humans. High housing costs, air pollution, less mobility, less freedom. If you price parking appropriately, you get a virtuous cycle instead. Expensive parking means less driving means more transit ridership means more free parking slots means more room for other development, etc.
    - sandworm101 2y ago
      It is not an "edge case" in a development for 55+s. And, with the shifting economic, we will soon see a great many more seniors growing old in condos rather than detached houses.
komboozcha 2y ago
Funny how you consider less parking to be outsourcing, but you wouldn't consider free parking to be subsidizing. Curious.

davidw 2y ago

Malls usually have huge, empty parking lots, so it sounds like it's a win: More people got a home to live in that costs less, and some formerly squandered land was better utilized. And if you start doing other things like legalizing corner stores and neighborhood businesses, rather than designing everything for the automobile Uber alles, maybe some of those people will find they don't need a car. Also, policy changes almost never happen in one nice tidy package where you do all the things at once, like eliminating expensive and arbitrary parking rules, adding a bunch of transit, re-legalizing neighborhood commercial, right-sizing roads, etc... so there are going to be fits and starts and bumps along the way. Still worth doing though.

potato3732842 2y ago
To be fair, those mall parking lots were busy at one point in history.
- davidw 2y ago
  Strong Towns had people take pictures on 'Black Friday' of mall parking lots, just to see. Many of them still had a ton of excess capacity.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    I meant history like 1993, not history like several months ago.

comte7092 2y ago

So you make the street parking paid. It’s insane that so much land is dedicated to giving people free space to store their personal vehicles. “But that’s unfair!” People can take the bus. “But the bus service isn’t good!” That’s because no one uses the bus, if there’s demand, supply will be added. The biggest determinant of transit use is the availability of parking.

sandworm101 2y ago
Try working in care. Try doing home care for maybe five or six different elderly clients every day, each at a random location. If we want to support elderly people we need to provide for the poorly-paid care providers who must bounce around doing that support. Telling them to take the bus is about as effective as telling Amazon to abandon delivery vans in favor of bicycles.
- amrocha 2y ago
  This edge case that you came up with warrants a car, but is that really the reality of most cars parking in any given community? And honestly, it’s questionable whether it warrants a car too. In Tokyo it would be perfectly fine to do those trips by public transport. My biweekly cleaner gets around by train to all the places she works at. And local delivery companies all use bicycles for last mile delivery. Maybe that’s not viable right now, but I think that’s the point of Donald’s advocacy. By not pricing parking correctly we provide perverse incentives as a society that lead us down a vicious cycle. Free parking means more cars means less transit ridership means we need more free parking, and repeat. This shapes our cities into places that prioritize cars over humans. High housing costs, air pollution, less mobility, less freedom. If you price parking appropriately, you get a virtuous cycle instead. Expensive parking means less driving means more transit ridership means more free parking slots means more room for other development, etc.
  - sandworm101 2y ago
    It is not an "edge case" in a development for 55+s. And, with the shifting economic, we will soon see a great many more seniors growing old in condos rather than detached houses.

komboozcha 2y ago

Funny how you consider less parking to be outsourcing, but you wouldn't consider free parking to be subsidizing. Curious.