5 ms·

Parking minimums prevent developers from free-loading on a commons, that commons being street parking. So eliminating parking minimums by themselves will creat

Parking minimums prevent developers from free-loading on a commons, that commons being street parking. So eliminating parking minimums by themselves will create nasty side effects. But of course the correct answer to tragedy of the commons is pricing -- price the street parking appropriately and it won't be abused so you won't need worse solutions like parking minimums.

twelvechairs 9mo ago
Or just do what the Japanese do - remove unlimited (and overnight) on-street parking in urban areas and require anyone owning a car to prove they have a private parking spot to house it
- stronglikedan 9mo ago
  That's pretty drastic, and would probably only be the best alternative on a densely packed island. Seems like overkill for any other situation.
  - seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
    Price parking appropriately and make people pay for it. If land is cheap, parking is cheap, so not a big deal. If land is expensive, then no freeloading on the streets, which can be put to better use anyways (sidewalks, bike lanes, outdoor cafes etc...)
    - blell 9mo ago
      What do you mean freeloading? Do you know how many taxes do you pay to have a vehicle, gas, etc?
      - bryanlarsen 9mo ago
        You perhaps pay tens of dollars per month. Is that enough to fully cover all externalized costs of owning that vehicle? No.
        blell 9mo ago
        The government says yes. In fact, knowing the government, they probably get a huge surplus from my taxes. What makes you say no?
        hamdingers 9mo ago
        You should look up how your local government pays for the kinds of local roads you can park on. If you live in the US, there's a very good chance that's coming from the property and sales tax everyone pays, not any tax on your vehicle.
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - triceratops 9mo ago
        You're leaving your property on public land. How much would that land rent for?
      - ragall 9mo ago
        The car registration and gas taxes don't even pay for a quarter of all road-infrastructure-related costs. It boggles the mind to see free street parking in places like NYC, where a more reasonable cost structure would be something like other cities around the world (and Canada) do: divide the territory in parking districts. Locals can buy a discounted annual pass for the district where their main residence is located (should not cost less than $400/month in a place like Manhattan), while elsewhere the rate should be at least $10-12/hour.
  - hamdingers 9mo ago
    > probably only be the best alternative on a densely packed island So Manhattan or the San Francisco Peninsula? I suspect the refusal to kowtow to car owners and the density are interrelated. Tokyo is more dense, in (small?) part, because there is far less space consumed by inanimate appliances.
    - shiroiuma 9mo ago
      No, it's in very, very large part due to this. You can see it not just walking around, but especially when you go up in one of the tall buildings or in SkyTree tower and look at the city from above: you can't see any parking lots anywhere, and most of the roads are pretty small (there's some large boulevards, but not that many). Compare to any American city that was built up after the rise of the automobile and it's staggering how much space is wasted on cars in those cities.
      - mc3301 9mo ago
        Covered multi-story parking lots.
        PearlRiver 9mo ago
        And those cost money. That is the crux here. Free parking is frankly insane. It became untenable in Amsterdam as early as the 1960s when most people could afford a car. If you want trees, a sidewalk and bike lanes something has got to give.
- dottjt 9mo ago
  I think you're also forgetting the other aspect that allows this which is having readily available public transport.
  - mc3301 9mo ago
    Most of Japan doesn't have excellent public transport. Car ownership is less common in most of the places in Japan with excellent public transport. But I do like that each car legally requires its own parking spot. It is tricky to go to people's homes, because often extra parking is extremely limited or non-existent. It requires specific planning.
  - alamortsubite 9mo ago
    The more you subsidize automotive infrastructure, the more public transport will suffer for it.
- ragall 9mo ago
  That would be a good idea, but one of the main impediments is the fact that heavy regulations make underground concrete structures (and hence underground parking lots) very expensive, a lot more than in Europe or Asia, where it's often economical for even 3-5 story residential buildings to have underground parking space. That's the reason why developers push for on-street parking.
newsclues 9mo ago
But I have a bike and use public transit and don’t want parking driving up my cost of housing.
- bryanlarsen 9mo ago
  You also don't want the streets you bike on to be clogged up with cars parking legally, parking illegally and circling the block continuously looking for parking.
  - jakelazaroff 9mo ago
    Right, which is why the actual solution is mixed use development and a robust public transit system. Ultimately this is a geometry problem. Cars are by far the least space-efficient method of transporting people; eventually your roads just can't accommodate any more traffic. If there's enough demand to visit a given area then anything that doesn't minimize cars will just make things worse.
    - mustyoshi 9mo ago
      Cars are the most time efficient though, assuming you can find parking relatively quick.
      - jakelazaroff 9mo ago
        Not the case as density increases: once roads reach their capacity, space inefficiency quickly becomes time inefficiency. That's why some cities have started introducing congestion pricing.
      - scottious 9mo ago
        Depends on the trip. I've timed many trips bike vs. car in my city. Bike is usually faster (or very similar time) because the average speed through a city is actually pretty slow. There's a lot of "hurry up and wait" with cars (rush to get to the next red light) and on my bike I'm frequently passing long lines of cars stopped at lights. And parking is a time sink. There's a place in my city that has huge parking garages with lots of parking but you still have to drive through a few levels of the garage, park, and then walk back down a few flights of stairs, then walk to your destination. I just park my bike right outside of my destination with the wheel lock. Street parking is always awful in populated cities, and I never have to worry about it. I always park right at my destination, where ever it is. In suburbia, cars are faster because the average distance per trip is a lot longer. But it's ironic that the reason why the average distance is longer is BECAUSE it was built for cars so everything gets spread out! Cars are a solution to a problem that they created.
benced 9mo ago
If a developer builds in a way such that the demand for street parking outstrips supply, the street parking still has a cost, that cost is just expressed in time to find a spot, not dollars like you're suggesting. People unwilling to pay that time cost will find paid lots or not have a car (which is basically the dynamic in my building: people either pay $450 a month for a spot or they spend 10-15 minutes looking for a free street spot). In practice, of course, existing residents feel entitled to "their" street parking and get mad when a new building with new people contending for those spots is built but there's no logical reason to preference residents who have previously lived there. This is where politics rears its head though.
- nickff 9mo ago
  I completely agree with your comment, but would also like to add that many cities have restricted or stopped permitting the construction of above-surface parkades, further distorting the market.
- pavel_lishin 9mo ago
  > People unwilling to pay that time cost will find paid lots or not have a car If we're talking about commercial properties and zones, people unwilling to pay that time cost just won't come to the area.
  - benced 9mo ago
    This is correct which will incentivize the constructions of private lots etc (assuming the people you mentioned value their time more than the $ those lots cost). I don't see any reason you can't trust markets to address the supply of a commodity product.
    - wpm 9mo ago
      Exactly, it's not like a Target going up in an area with no parking minimums is going to be like "great our massive big box store won't need any parking!" They're just going to be incentivized to build enough parking to fill their store to levels they expect based on the massive amount of data they have, and not just some gut-feeling BS from the 60s in the parking minimums regulations "department store - 20 spots per 100sqft" or some bullshit.
kec 9mo ago
Even if on street parking were metered consistently and priced appropriately that's too divorced from the developer & their incentives to solve this. Parking after the building is sold is the definition of not the developer's problem, which is part of the reason we have parking regulations to begin with. A better solution might be to mandate parking minimums (to ensure the property is actually useful / not encroaching on the street) but not allowing "open air" spots to count to the minimum, meaning an open lot gets you nothing, a 2 level garage counts for half the spots, etc. Maybe tack on some credits for proximity to public transit while we're at it.
- bluGill 9mo ago
  It is very much important to the developer - whoever buys the land wants to know that their employees and customers can get there. That means there needs to be enough parking, transit, or pedestrians. If it is in a car centrist area that won't buy if there isn't enough parking. Downtowns can get by with less parking only if there is great transit to bring people in. Developers are not stupid, they know that if there isn't enough parking property values go down.
  - bombcar 9mo ago
    This is the root of the issue, which people often want to ignore - it's a class chicken'd egg problem. The "there is no parking at all" wonderlands can exist (even NOT counting artificial ones like Disneyland) - and the "everything is acres of parking and there's no street parking at all" also. The question is how you get from one extreme to another - in a way that does NOT require you to redevelop the entire city Simcity style, nor puts onerous costs such that all development is stifled. Part of it might be that if the parking lots/garages are not heavily used, or not used much, they'll "redevelop themselves" - but that likely requires making transit and other options better which is difficult, expensive, and often politically unsound.
    - gamblor956 9mo ago
      Disneyland has one of the largest parking structures in the world.
ericmay 9mo ago
Just a note - the parking minimums that are set themselves don’t necessarily correspond to the number of units built in the best way. So by artificially setting them you can windup with, as often seems the case, an oversupply of parking or in more rare cases an undersupply. But in addition to pricing street parking more appropriately, and some cities are doing so, shifting the load on to the common spaces is kind of what you want to see as a transit user because if it continues to be set at a minimum you just wind up building more parking lots, highways, and cars. But if “the market” decides the market can actually signal to government entities that we do indeed need and want more options. Like you actually want to see new apartments in urban cores built without parking garages. Theoretically (and perhaps in practice) these new developments should also be cheaper and less theoretically they give sidewalks and bus routes and tram routes more users and thus more funding and support. That then alleviates pressure on existing highways and everybody wins except the obnoxious highway lobby and the revolving door that it operates with existing state departments of highways.
spankalee 9mo ago
Changing street parking prices is a lot easier than changing buildings built with previous parking requirements. I'd say change the requirements first, then if there's a surge in street parking demand there will be natural pressure to raise prices.
jakelazaroff 9mo ago
> Parking minimums prevent developers from free-loading on a commons, that commons being street parking. Another way of looking at it: parking minimums require developers to encroach upon a commons, that commons being land that could otherwise be used for more productive things than free parking.
- pclmulqdq 9mo ago
  It's not a commons if they buy the land.
  - jakelazaroff 9mo ago
    Of course it is — unproductive land use creates negative externalities that affect the entire surrounding community. It's like saying "a factory dumping waste into a river doesn't pollute the commons if the river runs through their property". The article explains this well: > The office, filled with workers and transactions, generates far more in economic activity and value creation than its land value and, therefore, rises the highest. The apartment, where dozens of residents live, stands nearly as high. The rowhomes add steady, smaller value. But the parking lot does something different. It dips below the surface, shown as a red bar sinking into the ground. > Why below ground? Because in economic terms, a parking lot doesn’t simply fail to add value; it actively subtracts value. Every year it sits idle, it consumes some of the most valuable land in the city. > When valuable downtown land lies idle, it blocks the housing, jobs, and amenities that could exist there. The costs ripple outward: higher rents, longer commutes, fewer opportunities nearby. What could have been a productive part of the community instead becomes a hole in its fabric.
    - pclmulqdq 9mo ago
      The river dumping analogy is so bad it's laughable. Obviously you don't own the entire river when the river merely runs through your property nor do you own the ocean or the watershed, and property values surrounding yours go down by a measurable amount when you dump things in the river. What negative externalities does a parking lot create that an empty lot does not? Minimal noise from people pulling in and out? Extra walking time between lots that are built up? Some pollution from the cars? These are normal externalities from literally any building that might be there as well. You can see how this is a different class than a polluted river, and is literally immeasurable. With regards to the argument presented in the article, it's arguable that parking lots create value by making places accessible to more people. As such, a parking lot raises the property values and economic output of neighboring properties. I didn't see anything about that covered in the article, nor did I see any actual data. This is why chambers of commerce and the like support parking mandates, because they actually have positive externalities, not negative ones.
grokgrok 9mo ago
Distribute the currency appropriately so that pricing won't be abused.
seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
Get rid of street parking so drivers can't free load on the commons either, make parking something that you have to buy (with your rent or on your own) because it actually costs something. Also, you no longer have to worry about kids appearing into the street between parked cars that obscure their presence even near crosswalks (that cars park way too close to because they can't find parking elsewhere). Win-win.
nine_k 9mo ago
Expensive parking and higher population density might even make pubic transportation commercially viable. Not having to walk a mile from the nearest stop / station could also make it actually convenient to people of all walks of life.
irinianianian 9mo ago
Make it illegal to use private vehicles in urban areas, except for on specific ingress/egress routes. Bolster public transit. Most drivers are using their car to scoot around 5-10 miles. Make them walk (yes not everyone can; they have friends and family, care workers, etc). Invest in infrastructure to backfill gaps that make walking onerous. There was measurable improvement in air pollution during Covid lockdown. We'll hate it now but thank ourselves when we're 70 and a little less anxious about environmental collapse. Cars are great for road trips but a massive pollution and burden on urban infrastructure. Rip up superfluous sidewalks then (aka heat storage. Plus concrete is worse for joints) and leave the avenues/streets not designated for ingress and egress for bikes, small delivery vehicles, handicap accessibility.
tmnvix 9mo ago
People drive because it is convenient. If there are fewer parks it becomes less convenient and fewer people will drive. Why do we prioritise the convenience of those that want to park a car over those that need a place to live?

twelvechairs 9mo ago

Or just do what the Japanese do - remove unlimited (and overnight) on-street parking in urban areas and require anyone owning a car to prove they have a private parking spot to house it

stronglikedan 9mo ago
That's pretty drastic, and would probably only be the best alternative on a densely packed island. Seems like overkill for any other situation.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
  Price parking appropriately and make people pay for it. If land is cheap, parking is cheap, so not a big deal. If land is expensive, then no freeloading on the streets, which can be put to better use anyways (sidewalks, bike lanes, outdoor cafes etc...)
  - blell 9mo ago
    What do you mean freeloading? Do you know how many taxes do you pay to have a vehicle, gas, etc?
    - bryanlarsen 9mo ago
      You perhaps pay tens of dollars per month. Is that enough to fully cover all externalized costs of owning that vehicle? No.
      - blell 9mo ago
        The government says yes. In fact, knowing the government, they probably get a huge surplus from my taxes. What makes you say no?
        hamdingers 9mo ago
        You should look up how your local government pays for the kinds of local roads you can park on. If you live in the US, there's a very good chance that's coming from the property and sales tax everyone pays, not any tax on your vehicle.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - triceratops 9mo ago
      You're leaving your property on public land. How much would that land rent for?
    - ragall 9mo ago
      The car registration and gas taxes don't even pay for a quarter of all road-infrastructure-related costs. It boggles the mind to see free street parking in places like NYC, where a more reasonable cost structure would be something like other cities around the world (and Canada) do: divide the territory in parking districts. Locals can buy a discounted annual pass for the district where their main residence is located (should not cost less than $400/month in a place like Manhattan), while elsewhere the rate should be at least $10-12/hour.
- hamdingers 9mo ago
  > probably only be the best alternative on a densely packed island So Manhattan or the San Francisco Peninsula? I suspect the refusal to kowtow to car owners and the density are interrelated. Tokyo is more dense, in (small?) part, because there is far less space consumed by inanimate appliances.
  - shiroiuma 9mo ago
    No, it's in very, very large part due to this. You can see it not just walking around, but especially when you go up in one of the tall buildings or in SkyTree tower and look at the city from above: you can't see any parking lots anywhere, and most of the roads are pretty small (there's some large boulevards, but not that many). Compare to any American city that was built up after the rise of the automobile and it's staggering how much space is wasted on cars in those cities.
    - mc3301 9mo ago
      Covered multi-story parking lots.
      - PearlRiver 9mo ago
        And those cost money. That is the crux here. Free parking is frankly insane. It became untenable in Amsterdam as early as the 1960s when most people could afford a car. If you want trees, a sidewalk and bike lanes something has got to give.
dottjt 9mo ago
I think you're also forgetting the other aspect that allows this which is having readily available public transport.
- mc3301 9mo ago
  Most of Japan doesn't have excellent public transport. Car ownership is less common in most of the places in Japan with excellent public transport. But I do like that each car legally requires its own parking spot. It is tricky to go to people's homes, because often extra parking is extremely limited or non-existent. It requires specific planning.
- alamortsubite 9mo ago
  The more you subsidize automotive infrastructure, the more public transport will suffer for it.
ragall 9mo ago
That would be a good idea, but one of the main impediments is the fact that heavy regulations make underground concrete structures (and hence underground parking lots) very expensive, a lot more than in Europe or Asia, where it's often economical for even 3-5 story residential buildings to have underground parking space. That's the reason why developers push for on-street parking.

newsclues 9mo ago

But I have a bike and use public transit and don’t want parking driving up my cost of housing.

bryanlarsen 9mo ago
You also don't want the streets you bike on to be clogged up with cars parking legally, parking illegally and circling the block continuously looking for parking.
- jakelazaroff 9mo ago
  Right, which is why the actual solution is mixed use development and a robust public transit system. Ultimately this is a geometry problem. Cars are by far the least space-efficient method of transporting people; eventually your roads just can't accommodate any more traffic. If there's enough demand to visit a given area then anything that doesn't minimize cars will just make things worse.
  - mustyoshi 9mo ago
    Cars are the most time efficient though, assuming you can find parking relatively quick.
    - jakelazaroff 9mo ago
      Not the case as density increases: once roads reach their capacity, space inefficiency quickly becomes time inefficiency. That's why some cities have started introducing congestion pricing.
    - scottious 9mo ago
      Depends on the trip. I've timed many trips bike vs. car in my city. Bike is usually faster (or very similar time) because the average speed through a city is actually pretty slow. There's a lot of "hurry up and wait" with cars (rush to get to the next red light) and on my bike I'm frequently passing long lines of cars stopped at lights. And parking is a time sink. There's a place in my city that has huge parking garages with lots of parking but you still have to drive through a few levels of the garage, park, and then walk back down a few flights of stairs, then walk to your destination. I just park my bike right outside of my destination with the wheel lock. Street parking is always awful in populated cities, and I never have to worry about it. I always park right at my destination, where ever it is. In suburbia, cars are faster because the average distance per trip is a lot longer. But it's ironic that the reason why the average distance is longer is BECAUSE it was built for cars so everything gets spread out! Cars are a solution to a problem that they created.

benced 9mo ago

If a developer builds in a way such that the demand for street parking outstrips supply, the street parking still has a cost, that cost is just expressed in time to find a spot, not dollars like you're suggesting. People unwilling to pay that time cost will find paid lots or not have a car (which is basically the dynamic in my building: people either pay $450 a month for a spot or they spend 10-15 minutes looking for a free street spot). In practice, of course, existing residents feel entitled to "their" street parking and get mad when a new building with new people contending for those spots is built but there's no logical reason to preference residents who have previously lived there. This is where politics rears its head though.

nickff 9mo ago
I completely agree with your comment, but would also like to add that many cities have restricted or stopped permitting the construction of above-surface parkades, further distorting the market.
pavel_lishin 9mo ago
> People unwilling to pay that time cost will find paid lots or not have a car If we're talking about commercial properties and zones, people unwilling to pay that time cost just won't come to the area.
- benced 9mo ago
  This is correct which will incentivize the constructions of private lots etc (assuming the people you mentioned value their time more than the $ those lots cost). I don't see any reason you can't trust markets to address the supply of a commodity product.
  - wpm 9mo ago
    Exactly, it's not like a Target going up in an area with no parking minimums is going to be like "great our massive big box store won't need any parking!" They're just going to be incentivized to build enough parking to fill their store to levels they expect based on the massive amount of data they have, and not just some gut-feeling BS from the 60s in the parking minimums regulations "department store - 20 spots per 100sqft" or some bullshit.

kec 9mo ago

Even if on street parking were metered consistently and priced appropriately that's too divorced from the developer & their incentives to solve this. Parking after the building is sold is the definition of not the developer's problem, which is part of the reason we have parking regulations to begin with. A better solution might be to mandate parking minimums (to ensure the property is actually useful / not encroaching on the street) but not allowing "open air" spots to count to the minimum, meaning an open lot gets you nothing, a 2 level garage counts for half the spots, etc. Maybe tack on some credits for proximity to public transit while we're at it.

bluGill 9mo ago
It is very much important to the developer - whoever buys the land wants to know that their employees and customers can get there. That means there needs to be enough parking, transit, or pedestrians. If it is in a car centrist area that won't buy if there isn't enough parking. Downtowns can get by with less parking only if there is great transit to bring people in. Developers are not stupid, they know that if there isn't enough parking property values go down.
- bombcar 9mo ago
  This is the root of the issue, which people often want to ignore - it's a class chicken'd egg problem. The "there is no parking at all" wonderlands can exist (even NOT counting artificial ones like Disneyland) - and the "everything is acres of parking and there's no street parking at all" also. The question is how you get from one extreme to another - in a way that does NOT require you to redevelop the entire city Simcity style, nor puts onerous costs such that all development is stifled. Part of it might be that if the parking lots/garages are not heavily used, or not used much, they'll "redevelop themselves" - but that likely requires making transit and other options better which is difficult, expensive, and often politically unsound.
  - gamblor956 9mo ago
    Disneyland has one of the largest parking structures in the world.

ericmay 9mo ago

Just a note - the parking minimums that are set themselves don’t necessarily correspond to the number of units built in the best way. So by artificially setting them you can windup with, as often seems the case, an oversupply of parking or in more rare cases an undersupply. But in addition to pricing street parking more appropriately, and some cities are doing so, shifting the load on to the common spaces is kind of what you want to see as a transit user because if it continues to be set at a minimum you just wind up building more parking lots, highways, and cars. But if “the market” decides the market can actually signal to government entities that we do indeed need and want more options. Like you actually want to see new apartments in urban cores built without parking garages. Theoretically (and perhaps in practice) these new developments should also be cheaper and less theoretically they give sidewalks and bus routes and tram routes more users and thus more funding and support. That then alleviates pressure on existing highways and everybody wins except the obnoxious highway lobby and the revolving door that it operates with existing state departments of highways.

spankalee 9mo ago

Changing street parking prices is a lot easier than changing buildings built with previous parking requirements. I'd say change the requirements first, then if there's a surge in street parking demand there will be natural pressure to raise prices.

jakelazaroff 9mo ago

> Parking minimums prevent developers from free-loading on a commons, that commons being street parking. Another way of looking at it: parking minimums require developers to encroach upon a commons, that commons being land that could otherwise be used for more productive things than free parking.

pclmulqdq 9mo ago
It's not a commons if they buy the land.
- jakelazaroff 9mo ago
  Of course it is — unproductive land use creates negative externalities that affect the entire surrounding community. It's like saying "a factory dumping waste into a river doesn't pollute the commons if the river runs through their property". The article explains this well: > The office, filled with workers and transactions, generates far more in economic activity and value creation than its land value and, therefore, rises the highest. The apartment, where dozens of residents live, stands nearly as high. The rowhomes add steady, smaller value. But the parking lot does something different. It dips below the surface, shown as a red bar sinking into the ground. > Why below ground? Because in economic terms, a parking lot doesn’t simply fail to add value; it actively subtracts value. Every year it sits idle, it consumes some of the most valuable land in the city. > When valuable downtown land lies idle, it blocks the housing, jobs, and amenities that could exist there. The costs ripple outward: higher rents, longer commutes, fewer opportunities nearby. What could have been a productive part of the community instead becomes a hole in its fabric.
  - pclmulqdq 9mo ago
    The river dumping analogy is so bad it's laughable. Obviously you don't own the entire river when the river merely runs through your property nor do you own the ocean or the watershed, and property values surrounding yours go down by a measurable amount when you dump things in the river. What negative externalities does a parking lot create that an empty lot does not? Minimal noise from people pulling in and out? Extra walking time between lots that are built up? Some pollution from the cars? These are normal externalities from literally any building that might be there as well. You can see how this is a different class than a polluted river, and is literally immeasurable. With regards to the argument presented in the article, it's arguable that parking lots create value by making places accessible to more people. As such, a parking lot raises the property values and economic output of neighboring properties. I didn't see anything about that covered in the article, nor did I see any actual data. This is why chambers of commerce and the like support parking mandates, because they actually have positive externalities, not negative ones.

grokgrok 9mo ago

Distribute the currency appropriately so that pricing won't be abused.

seanmcdirmid 9mo ago

Get rid of street parking so drivers can't free load on the commons either, make parking something that you have to buy (with your rent or on your own) because it actually costs something. Also, you no longer have to worry about kids appearing into the street between parked cars that obscure their presence even near crosswalks (that cars park way too close to because they can't find parking elsewhere). Win-win.

nine_k 9mo ago

Expensive parking and higher population density might even make pubic transportation commercially viable. Not having to walk a mile from the nearest stop / station could also make it actually convenient to people of all walks of life.

irinianianian 9mo ago

Make it illegal to use private vehicles in urban areas, except for on specific ingress/egress routes. Bolster public transit. Most drivers are using their car to scoot around 5-10 miles. Make them walk (yes not everyone can; they have friends and family, care workers, etc). Invest in infrastructure to backfill gaps that make walking onerous. There was measurable improvement in air pollution during Covid lockdown. We'll hate it now but thank ourselves when we're 70 and a little less anxious about environmental collapse. Cars are great for road trips but a massive pollution and burden on urban infrastructure. Rip up superfluous sidewalks then (aka heat storage. Plus concrete is worse for joints) and leave the avenues/streets not designated for ingress and egress for bikes, small delivery vehicles, handicap accessibility.

tmnvix 9mo ago

People drive because it is convenient. If there are fewer parks it becomes less convenient and fewer people will drive. Why do we prioritise the convenience of those that want to park a car over those that need a place to live?