Who’s first?!

Really interesting and edifying article about the impact of the car parking places in a city when there is no urban planning.

“Parking Bombs. More! That’s the scream of merchants and others who believe that a downtown without an endless sea of parking is not worth going to. But once the whole downtown turns into a parking lot it’s not really worth much anymore is it? Yet we still see the discussion of parking dominate without an eye for the destruction that it can cause a downtown if left unfettered.
Before Portland’s miraculous return as an urban Mecca, it too was once infested by parking. So was the city of Houston, where parking lots took over most of the downtown at one point. […] So much parking though, what has that done to the city’s value? What has it taken away in terms of tax revenue from land and greater employment agglomerations? A study by Anne Moudon and Dohn Wook Sohn showed that offices that were clustered had greater values than those that weren’t in the Seattle region. […] Greater value for downtowns was lost and in the process we saw places like Hartford, as found by Dr. Norm Garrick at UConn lose population, employment, and their character. Not just the loss from parking, but from the gutting of the city by the Interstate System. Here are some slides from Dr. Garrick showing the destruction. […] Lost revenue, lost agglomeration, lost value. Will these examples teach us a lesson about too much parking? Perhaps”

“Jeff Wood is principal at the San Francisco transport consultancy The Overhead Wire, and edits The Direct Transfer. This article first appeared on his blog in 2010.”