I hold no love for parking minimums, and would love to see them abolished, but proposals like "we should turn 10% of all current parking spaces into low-income housing" just make me roll eyes.
That's not an actionable proposal, the closest that gets to an actionable proposal is to demolish existing parking structures and either put public housing projects on top of them or incentivize real estate developers to build actual low-income housing.
Telling real estate developers to build low-income housing in areas where they could easily build high-income housing is, well, let's just say cities promise this all the time and developers never do it.
"Build more housing" is probably the answer to the homeless problem, but the ownership issue needs to be fixed first. The author made all these cute graphics of studio apartments superimposed on parking spaces. Cool, I like density, my condo is 650 sqft, like 3 or 4 spaces without egress.
Are we talking about literally taking parking from existing owners and building housing on the bare pads? Are we talking about building vertically on top of them and leaving the space underneath for cars? I'm not saying these are bad ideas. But can we fully bake them first? So a politician can actually hand it to a bunch of legislators and come up with something he can actually put on his platform?
Sure let's abolish the minimum. But that won't do a darned thing to help congestion and the housing shortage other than make LA more like Atlanta where there's an island of density around a bunch of ugly sprawl with more dense pockets springing up in the periphery. We're still waiting for market conditions to fix the city. And market forces don't care about what we want. Promising low-income housing in desirable real estate markets doesn't work but is the only thing politicians can put on their platforms that people will vote for.
"we should turn 10% of all current parking spaces into low-income housing" wasn't a proposal on the site. It was more of a demonstration that, if we could do that, we would satisfy the entire deficit of low-income renters that currently exists in LA. The actual policy proposals were at the end:
1. No universal parking minimums. Developers choose how much parking the market requires.
2. Parking Maximums in Transit Oriented Communities.
3. All new parking garages must be built with a flat floor and a high enough ceiling to allow future conversion into office, studio, or living space.
4. 20% of parking spaces must include EV charging, with the rest install ready.
5. Garages must include an equivalent number of bicycle/micro-mobility parking spaces.
I would say suggestions 2-5 get progressively worse, but suggestion 1 is really good and backed up by the data presented.
Suggestion 3 is particularly terrible, since the concrete skeleton of a parking garage is really poorly suited for conversion to housing. Utilities will require raised floors and drop ceilings even for arterial needs. The size of the building footprint is unreasonable for general residential division - leaving either large interior space vacuums (which can cause safety issues especially when lacking natural light) or units with no external wall (causing a different set of health issues and probably massive fire code violations). The material to be built on will be contaminated oil soaked concrete (the sort of material they truck out of former gas stations before any other kind of construction can commence). And, lastly, parking garages aren't structured to allow a structural wall free perimeter which means that temperature control within such a building would have to be entirely artificially done - so A/C and heat 24/7.
It is much more cost effective and environmentally friendly to tear down parking garages and replace them with new construction.
For 1 - sure yea, I sorta doubt developers are going to voluntarily go below 1 space/unit in any sort of world because the value of the property takes a steep dive - but removing any commercial unit parking requirements or higher requirements for larger residential units makes sense.
I think 2 is great - assuming exceptions are made to support park & ride demand.
4... Eh, EV is going to need to solve this through market forces so I think we can entirely ignore this (though I would love to see a lot more EVs I think this is point is entirely tangential to the main discussion)
Lastly for 5 - nope. Every building ever has managed to sort this out naturally without regulation... leave this up to the market.
The problem I see with #5 is that parking your bike outside in an unsecured area is a recipe for getting it stolen (in the US). Bike theft is rampant in America and thieves will steal anything that isn't locked to something immovable, and even then they'll steal parts off of it. Civilized countries don't have this problem, and people happily park their bikes outside, at transit stations, etc. all the time without worrying about this.
Here in DC, we have "bike lockers" at the Metro transit stations so you can park your bike there and take the train into the city. However, these lockers aren't cheap, and there aren't many of them, and they're completely enclosed so they take up a fair amount of space. By contrast, in Germany you'll find many hundreds of bikes just lined up and parked outside the S-bahn station, without people having to pay a hefty rental fee.
Suggestion 1 is terrible unless it's combined with a limited permit scheme for street parking. Otherwise you end up with a mess where everyone buys a car anyway, then ends up circling the block around and around hunting for a space.
> Telling real estate developers to build low-income housing in areas where they could easily build high-income housing is, well, let's just say cities promise this all the time and developers never do it.
Where I currently live developers are required by law to build. Certain percentage of square meters of social housing for every square meter of higher class housing they build. When my house got build they had to build social housing right next to it.
If I understood it correctly, the city ties this to the building permits. So if you wanna build new stuff you need to show that your plans include these social and affordable flats as well.
A city should in my opinion regulate to maximize the happieness of it’s inhabitants and not it’s developers (to some degree these two overlap anyways).
Certainly you could also try to change things via the market, but unless your city has a lack of developers why should you?
I have heard that, in the long run, these kinds of legislation tend to really kick the housing affordability problem into turbo mode.
What ends up happening is that developers need to raise the rents on the non-subsidized units, because they're the ones that subsidize the subsidized ones. Which creates a constant upward pressure on housing prices that ends up squeezing everybody.
I'm not sure what the solution is, and I'm no economist, but it seems plausible. Looking at it from a 3,000 meter perspective, I would assume that, however well-intentioned San Francisco's housing policies were, we should probably expect that emulating them will yield the same outcomes that San Francisco is currently experiencing.
That's not to say that habitually segregating rich and poor people is a great idea, either. I would also suspect that emulating Detroit would also tend to lead to the sorts of outcomes that Detroit is currently experiencing.
Those low income housing requirements are counterproductive in many ways. You end up with low and high income housing, but those policies are terrible for those in the middle. Too "rich" to qualify for low income housing, but unable to afford market rate.
Agree completely. Houston doesn’t have zoning. Houston also doesn’t have a housing affordability crisis. Houston also doesn’t have high developer fees or low income housing mandates. Houston also has a lot of parking. Weird. A city doing almost the exact opposite of what many “housing advocates” prescribe and they don’t have a housing problem.
Low income housing is the wrong solution to a simple problem. Zoning laws introduce too many restrictions to keep the market from running efficiently. This is why you see "housing crises" everywhere in the world right now. If the market could solve the problem, it would. The market can't solve it, so the problem persists and aristocrats get to keep watching their land values skyrocket and rent-seek another day.
Zoning isn't a cure-all. Housing is getting pretty expensive in Houston, one of the only large US cities with lax-to-non-existent zoning laws (and also high property taxes). Also, I think most people want some restrictions on what can be built where. I don't think many parents want strip clubs built next to preschools, and I don't think many people want a cement factory to be built across the street from a public park.
I also don't think many people want the zoning laws we have either. They just want to see their land value increase as fast as possible, but that's not really sustainable either.
I thought we might reach a tipping point as we reach a majority renter population. But Europe has been a majority renter society for a long time, and I would argue Europe's housing (to buy) is more unaffordable than US housing. Strangely, the price to earning on real estate makes 0 sense in Europe (even with respect to interest rates), and renting is somehow much more affordable in Europe (even though buying isn't).
Street cars lose against cars on the open road. I think they end up performing best on otherwise pedestrianized streets - assuming good attention is paid to safety design.
"Third world" traffic jams are what you get when you have enough population density. And for that, you don't have to go to this "third world" you speak of, look at NY.
I am not sure how you arrived at the conclusion that a lack of street parking is what causes traffic jams rather than a lack of sane traffic infrastructure or public transportation. But, it doesn't make sense from first principles, at least. Could you explain how you came to that conclusion?
Zurich had this problem, the city was built before cars were a thing and thus it is inept of handling much traffic.
The authorities decided to disincentivize driving cars by blocking roads and reducing available parking spaces [0] while offering good public transport. Worked well, now only 17% commute by car.
While this is great for Zurich, and I would like to see it applied to a larger American city, but LA and Zurich are incredibly different scales of size. LA (according to Wikipedia) is 1,213.8 squared km, compared to Zurich at 97.8 squared km. I am not an urban planner, but I imagine that size difference would make implementing the Zurich model a completely different challenge.
LA is effectively several different cities tied together under a single government entity. It even has a few holes in it where it completely surrounds several independent cities (Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, for example.) There's no reason a Zurich-sized chunk of LA couldn't implement a Zurich-like system and test how it works out.
Vancouver pretty much hasn't built any new roads since the 1960s. Accordingly traffic flows in/out of the downtown penninsula remain at 1960s levels even though the amount of people living and working there has massively increased. Vancouver has managed by building public transit and high quality cycling infrastructure as alternative transportation options.
That's well and good, but the sticking point is "the city was built before cars were a thing." The US is already heavy with sprawl and it's a reality that we have to live with. I'm not sure how to put that cat back in the bag.
While the US is no doubt "heavy with sprawl" Los Angeles isn't one of them. I'm from Atlanta—now that's sprawl!
Compared to other major US cities Los Angeles is truly dense (63% of LA is paved!). My favorite demonstrative anecdote—when approaching by air from the east the 'carpet of lights' starts to appear below about fifteen minutes prior to reaching LAX (which is on the Pacific shore). That's fifteen minutes at transport aircraft arrival speed. I go 'wow' every time I come into town at night if the views are clear.
Los Angeles is just massive, meanwhile its 'effective density' [my term] is reduced by the prevalence of quakes and the expense of taller structures¹.
It's a shame more folks cannot find a pattern of transit/cycling that works for them; the weather is so favorable and the topography is bike-friendly, outside of the canyons/SaMo Mtns), but so many people must live where it's more affordable while working where the businesses are (historically high-rent areas). This is an urban planning trope, so nothing new about that but LA is doubling-down on that pattern lately with the genesis of "Silicon Beach" these past few years.
(me: LA transplant (10+ years) here and I use transit/cycle exclusively for the work week & for more than half of my weekend activities.)
¹—I'd expect we have zoning that impedes "increased density + lower parking minimums" but admittedly I cannot speak to that point directly.
Practically speaking, it’s going to require the destruction of wealth on a vast scale. All that sprawling housing (and the associated businesses) will be physically or practically bulldozed to disincentivize use of private vehicles. GLWT.
Many American cities have run down and hollowed out cores that are ripe for redevelopment. The challenge is to achieve a critical mass of housing, services and employment options that are accessible without the need for a cars, which requires committed effort.
Plenty of low-density cities make public transit work, all over the world—Canada would be your closest example. With a bit of public money and political willpower extensive, fast and functional bus systems can be set up even in the sprawliest of American cities.
The problem here is really that public spending has been vilified through decades of propaganda. The general public will vote against any taxation increase to pay for public works, even if those works would, in the end, lead to better lives for themselves.
It's a good idea in theory but what about out of town trips? Where do people park their cars until they need them? You can commute for 42 weeks but then, if you want to drive out to the country, how do you do it? I presume Zurich has some suburbs and houses with garages but I'm wondering if the current parking is enough to account for the need in cars that aren't used strictly for commuting.
Well the train network in all of Switzerland is great. If I want to go skiing, I just hop on a train towards any ski resort and arrive within 1-2h. Wanna go hiking? Take the train. Wanna visit the French or Italian part of Switzerland? Take the train. Works very well and covers most out-of-town trips for me and most people I know. In those rare cases when I do need a car, I just get a rental or use car-sharing (for example when leaving Switzerland). Factoring in the train tickets and the rental car, my transport expenses are still significantly less than they would be if I owned a car.
Parking minimums are a big problem. But, it's just a part of a much bigger problem: Regulation is strangling the life out of us. Regulation like zoning and countless other regs prevents market forces from working the way they should.
Have you ever heard of a banana shortage crisis or a jeans shortage crisis in the US? No you haven't. The reason is because market forces are able to adjust to changes in market demand. In housing, those market forces are bottled up and stifled, preventing investments, preventing innovation, preventing progress, preventing better solutions. We really really need to start looking at regulations and find ways to get rid of the ones causing all these problems.
ADDED:
We've seen very little actual VC money or Research and development go into improving the cost of creating Shelter (In fact, we haven't made any improvements in this in the last 50 to 100 years adjusted for inflation). Much of this is due to regulations. Other industries can find ways to reduce cost but the mountain of housing regulations prevent any and all progress in these areas. I'd argue Housing is one of the most critical areas that human should be trying to progress in, as it's most important for human survival.
I love it when purely ideological comments run into the messiness of reality. Food production being completely contrary to a free market, they are one of the most heavily subsidized and regulated markets around.
As a pragmatist, one of my favorite phrases I say quite often:
"The difference between theory and reality is that in theory there is no difference."
The article is excellent expose of an issue and a solution. I hope they would include specific things we can do to help improve the situation. I'm part of California YIMBY, which promotes legislation that helps ease these issues.
Because in the absence of regulation, companies will be driven by the market to do the "right" thing? This is not a problem in which the solution is likely to be highly profitable (or even profitable at all) so I'm not sure why you suggest that a free and unregulated market would lead to an improvement in this scenario.
You mention zoning laws in particular. Those were designed for specific reasons so what about them would you change? Surely you aren't suggesting just to get rid of them all?
Form Based Zoning Codes are a good step. The goal there is to focus on physical form instead of land use. So as an overly broad example - keep the height and setback restrictions but remove the rules about subdividing a residence or converting a residence to retail or office. This allows market forces to have a stronger influence on the real estate market.
I would get rid of them entirely for at least half the areas/city. Then, you could have the other half of the city with zoning laws and let those people pay through the nose for the so called benefits of "zoning"
I genuinely don't understand how people, out-weigh the benefits of zoning against the million dollar price tagged homes. What is so important, that justifies you go into debt 800K plus extra?
Personally, I'd rather pay 200K for a home, rather than 1 million $ for the same home but with zoning laws. Now, I don't know if it's a 5 to 1 difference in every case. But, we all know 5 to 1 difference in cost is not at all unusual on a per sq ft basis.
Bananas and jeans are inexpensive consumables. Homes comprise over a quarter of non-financial assets in the US while being responsible for 68% of household liabilities [0].
Regulations have undeniably caused harm in California.
Yet, an elephant lurks. Housing is a massive system dependent upon the price of homes/land continuously rising. History has shown that when that doesn't happen, it is disastrous.
Maybe the market disentangles that, but by god would it be destructive.
> Regulation like zoning and countless other regs prevents market forces from working the way they should.
On the other hand, so do externalities in the absence of regulation to internalize them. Real markets quite often don't approximate the idealized way markets should work without lots of help.
> Have you ever heard of a banana shortage crisis [...] in the US?
“Yes, we have no bananas today” is actually a reference to such a crisis.
>We've seen very little actual VC money or Research and development go into improving the cost of creating Shelter
"Blokable Closes $23 Million in Series A Financing to Lower the Cost of Developing, Building, and Owning Multi-Family Housing in West Coast Communities"
When I read news like that, it doesn't really inspire any hope. When VC money is invested in something it seems like the only thing that ultimately matters is a nice exit for the VCs. Low income people needing housing is just another resource to be exploited.
Blokable prefabs look horrible. We don't need cubes/boxes to shove humans into, we need real homes. The housing shortage isn't just about a lack of shelter but about a lack of human spaces.
Specific regulations may have problematic impacts (or positive ones, or some mix).
Statements about "regulation" in abstract are meaningless, except to subtract from the idea that specific insight matters, and add to the idea all one needs to approach any given problem is a general ideological approach.
While I agree with what you’re saying I’m not sure jeans and bananas are in the same category as housing because they’re much cheaper to produce (granted, simple concrete structures are also very cheap to produce, not quite so cheap though.)
The point is, they wouldn't be cheap, if we created regulations around them. For instance, let's say, for environmental reasons you decided that all jeans must use the wool of a canadian sheep that's hard to grow. Now the price of jeans triples needlessly. This sort of thing happens all the time in housing and nobody ever realizes it.
The market response to the California housing crisis has generally been to build new housing at the top of the market. A large reason for that is that construction costs are a smaller percentage of housing in California due to high cost of land.
We also need to recognize that trickle down economics doesn't work when it comes to housing just like it doesn't work when it comes other areas of economics. A 1500 square foot high rise 1 bedroom condo with an in-unit washer and dryer is so different from a 200 square foot unit that doesn't even have an in-unit shower that they function as completely separate markets.
Those two things mean we likely need more regulation not less. Although that doesn't mean the regulation we have currently is necessarily good. Removing regulation regarding parking might still be a smart move.
When there's a shortage of luxury units, rich people grudgingly bid up the low-end units because they still have to live somewhere. That's why low-end units here have higher prices than luxury units in other places.
The argument is not trickle down economics although, it's wealthy demand traps. Ex:
"If rich people can't buy ferraris, and there is a limit to 100 BMWs and 100 civics, then rich people will boost the price of all the BMWs and Civics and all you can buy is really old broken down chevrolets, if you can buy one at all."
"But I bought my civic when it was an affordable price, and I have a special old person subsidized gas price, why do we need build more civics, ferraris and BMWs for all of these new immigrants?! Why can't they just stay in their own country?"
This is an absolutely horrible argument, housing (namely multifamily housing) doesn't apply the same rules of economies of scale that other consumer durables do both due to natural capital costs and the inability to prefabricate huge parts of the building process (You cannot prefab the giant ditch you need to fill with concrete down to the bedrock that takes 100s of thousands of man hours to build).
The only viable solution to reduce the cost of housing is prefabricated, but moderately sized apartments/multi-family homes. The way you get this is not by unilaterally removing regulation, but by getting rid of local regulation in favor of national regulation.
> We really really need to start looking at regulations and find ways to get rid of the ones causing all these problems.
Yes, I agree, totally. Except where this is impossible.
You can't "free market" the cars out of cities. Nobody wants them gone, and everyone has vested interests in them staying: real estate, construction, parking+traffic violation revenue, car owners, car manufacturers, insurance companies, lawyers... Massive amounts of money flow through the co-existence of cars with cities.
The market's trend is to exacerbate the car problem. How will gutting regulation reverse it all?
We do have examples of cities with loose regulation. Houston is famously lax with building permits. Sure it means people build in flood plains and the entire thing is a giant sprawl that where you have to drive everywhere, but it does grow fast and attract a lot of people.
"Have you ever heard of a banana shortage crisis or a jeans shortage crisis in the US?"
No, but I've heard of gruesome conditions for child laborers in sweatshops and I've heard of banana monoculture that has resulted in disease and threatens extinction of the crop.
We should all push for better and more adaptable regulations that aim to minimize the damages caused by capitalism and enhance its benefits. But regulations as a concept is not the problem, only the implementations.
Don't forget the homelessness, mental health and drug crises that are challenging everyone on the West Coast. It's not just about not having enough homes, it's about the culture we create for people to thrive.
There was a banana shortage in Australia. All the banana plantations were too geographically concentrated and were damaged by a cyclone. I remember a peak of AU$16 per kg bananas, circa 2006.
Amusingly you experienced those high prices only because of... regulation! AU gov banned fresh banana imports, so the market couldn't easily sort the problem. Other countries had stock and were ready to step in but were not allowed to do so.
> Mr Howard told banana growers in north Queensland after the cyclone that he would not allow imports of fresh bananas until the industry got back on its feet.
> But he went further on the sensitive subject of importing fresh product, indicating the Philippines government's long push to export bananas to Australia may never succeed.
I’d prefer an argument that mentions the type of regulations you intend to relax/change. Construction? Nope, there’s safety involved. Zoning? Feasible, let’s talk.
I've been to part of the world without strong regulations and seen, first hand, what the unregulated capitalist housing market will deliver if you allow it. Dangerous dwellings, that are impractical, bread misery (particularly for families), and an endless race towards that bottom (since that's always the most "efficient" way to "store" people, and therefore most profitable for a developer).
It is very easy to make these glib "just remove regulation and let the problem solve itself" comments, without really addressing what that reality actually looks like. We aren't talking about a city of single family homes, we're talking about family homes largely no longer existing since lawns, property separation, "extra" rooms, "extra" walls, etc are all inefficiencies that will be eliminated by the market sooner or later.
So, sure, run housing like bananas or jeans but don't be surprised when dwellings start to look less like homes and more like a efficient storage medium for human creatures.
Totally agree. We continue to view housing as a physical product when we should consider it to be a financial service instead. Because that's what developers are building - a way for us to consume a financial product called a morgage.
This is all fine and good, but IMHO LA metro map says it all [1]. 6 lines. What a joke. This mega city should have light or heavy rail metro pretty much everywhere. It's even better if there are parking lots in abundance. Park & Ride can be put into place more easily. So, it's obviously a political choice and I am not sure more regulation on parking will have any significant impact on this.
I'm from Germany and visited LA last month. I was riding the rail because we usually use public transportation when visiting other countries. We wanted to visit the walk of fame and it was a much nicer experience than hassling through the traffic in LA. The traffic is borderline insane. The diamond lane was almost empty because apparently everyone is driving in their own car. My wife and I were under the impression that only people who can't afford a car were driving the rail, but we don't know if that's true or not. The rail (and bus) was certainly a much saner choice than the car. I've never seen such a large city with such an underused public transportation. Meanwhile, you have 5 or 6 lanes running through the city, which makes the rail stops unbearably loud.
Based on discussion with my cousin who lives in L.A. (I do not), it's a bit deceptive - public transit is great for few popular (touristy) spots; but it doesn't have a comprehensive enough grid to be that useful for locals living in distributed / random locations, going to places of work :|
I live in Toronto where the subway is extremely limited in terms number of lines/paths, but at least they go to mostly the right places. Public transit is definitely a second-class-citizen, but subways going downtown are full, every day. The go-train also does a semi-passable job of enabling longer commutes... but we still have a LONG way to go. Unfortunately, each successive mayor has a completely different vision,and fights with the province to overturn the previous plan. At this point, had we picked any one option twenty years ago, even if sub-optimal, we would've had something. Ottawa seemed to do a better job with their LRT even though they had to make it through more layers of government (municipal, provincial, and national), but it's just been a lot quieter job. In Toronto, it's each mayor's main campaigning platform so it has to be a sensational proposal of "change" :-/
I am German living in LA. When I lived in Munich and Stuttgart usually travel times with S-Bahn or U-Bahn were pretty competitive and I could get to most places without problems. In LA the network is not dense enough so for a lot of places you have to choose between one hour in the car or 3 hours on 5 different buses. It also doesn't help that the houses are very spread out so distances are much longer compared to Munich for example.
But in the end Americans on average don't believe in spending money on public services in a systematic way. They build a light rail here, a high speed train there, at great expense but without any kind of systems thinking. Then they are surprised that the system doesn't get used which confirms the view that public spending is a waste. I have no idea how to get out of that cycle other than a much more wide spread adoption of remote work maybe. Self driving cars will make things just worse because they make even longer commutes possible and sitting in traffic won't be as stressful for the driver.
I don't live in LA but the complaints I've heard from LA people is that the rail there only goes to places useful for tourists (they say it's a political showpiece)
LA has bus lines covering nearly the entire county. With the exception of a few bus lines, usage is not heavy enough to justify the billions it would cost to build light or heavy rail along those lines.
Where bus use is sufficiently heavy, Metro is planning (or is already building) rail lines to be constructed over the next 40 years as funding permits.
Buses are unbelievably slow. Every where I've ever lived, I've looked at the commute difference by car, bike and bus. Buses are universally the slowest option. In the most egregious case I recall, my commute from home to my university (in SoCal, but not LA) was 20-40 minutes by car depending on traffic and ~3 HOURS by bus.
LA has a good rail system on top of a crappy city. You could put the Tube in LA and it wouldn't go where you needed to go because everything in LA is ten times further away than it should be. It's mostly asphalt.
Compared to 80's Seoul, LA metro's coverage doesn't seem very bad. Give it some time while heavily disincentivizing use of cars. At least, LA has a central public authority on mass transit for 10 millions, which is a much better situation than bay.
Yes. LA has rail that will get you downtown and to Hollywood. As a commuting replacement, its abysmal. To get to work, the rail is never quicker than just driving, even on bad days. Ive lived close and far, and it never made sense from a time or sanity perspective vs just leaving 35 minutes earlier.
Abolishing parking will never happen in LA, because that would force people to get off the roads. It's a car culture here.
Also, its a good idea .. everyone in my building seems to buy their porche or audi and park it in the middle of their allocated two parking spots in the ramp below the apartments.
Culture changes. One day when I was growing up, someone said, "Hey dog owners, pick up your dog's poop." Insane. No is going to wrap their hand around a bag of hot poop. That's just not who we are. It was crazy. It's still crazy.
Ugh. Has this author ever visited LA? The entire city / culture is built around using a car to get to places. This article does nothing to address that, other than a few whimpy shoutouts to build more “convenient” public transit. Apparently we can get rid of all parking in Hollywood because a single red line runs through it.
In order for a public transit system to be convenient you need a LOT of density. You also need speed. The two goals are fundamentally at odds with each other. That’s why a lot of people prefer cars. No one likes traffic or emissions, and cars are way more likely to kill you, but damn are cars convenient even in urban environments.
Any plan like this can have all these numbers talking about how much space could be freed up but they need to address this fundamental problem, and this article failed to.
Now what interesting is the rise of self driving cars. I’ve often see paid parking lots and think within 20-30 years they will be out of biz. A few large operators will emerge and park their cars overnight at some owned large lot far out of the city to recharge, maintain, etc, and there won’t be much need anymore. So that could be a path to what author is talking about, long term. Of course does nothing for parking lot owners who just hold onto the property speculating...
It's always amazed me that humans - even those without much 'high tech' - can adapt to environments as diverse as the arctic, Kalahari desert, or jungles of Borneo, but god forbid the government stop mandating the precise number of parking spots places need, because no one would be able to adapt.
Ok, go live in the arctic without any electricity since it's so easy then. Just because we can live in worse conditions doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for improvement, and as may come as a surprise to some people, most people like having parking available and find cars convenient.
They want removal of regulation regarding parking spots (free market), but building of rent-controlled social housing on the freed space (non-free market).
Build more housing where driving a car isn't the default mode of getting around and people will naturally start to demand better public transportation services and local spots they can get to via bike or walking. This housing won't suit everyone's needs but there's a significant part of the population who wouldn't mind being carless even in southern California.
Changing LA's car mentality isn't going to happen overnight but it has to start somewhere.
> culture is built around using a car to get to places. This article does nothing to address that
You should read the article.
compare the two first images on section 3 https://noparkinghere.com/#03 to understand why people take the car instead of walking to what is supposed to be next-door stores. Then remind that with actual density, your local gym/church/cafe will be actually be local, as in no need to drive to it and you still get there under 5min.
If I'm reading your comment right, I think you agree with the actual policy proposal presented. LA currently makes it illegal to build density via mandating parking everywhere. Removing that mandate doesn't remove any parking immediately - it only makes future development able to increase the density over what already exists.
Also, the fundamental way to have density and speed is Transit-Oriented Development. Basically super-high density within walking distance of stations. That way the experience of walking to a station, taking the train, and walking to a destination near the end station is really good. The places between the stations can be lower density without really changing anything.
Projections that I read from urbanists about autonomous cars is that it will make transit worst, not better.
We’ll have empty cars driving around the city to pick some up. Causing transit. It’s the same effect Uber is causing to cities. More transit and people taking less mass transit.
The scenario that I read from urbanists is that people will continue to own an autonomous car, and the car will drive you to work, drive back home to pick up your partner, drive her/him to work, drive back to pick up the kids, then drive them to school, and on and on. So more empty cars on the road.
While I see autonomous cars as a cool tech, I don’t see urbanists thinking it will solve urban planning.
An autonomous car should have a better reaction time than a human. If we have 100% autonomous cars, and a traffic light turns green, we should be able to avoid (or reduce) the ripple effect where cars down the line don't even start moving until a while later. They can all move at roughly the same time (and none of these cars will be reading their phones).
Likewise they will react more predictably. We won't have an idiot cutting lanes, or tapping his brakes since he can't maintain a constant speed. Apparently most traffic issues are caused by a few bad actors having an over-sized effect.
So I think even with more cars, we can get better flow, which is what traffic is all about. But it will be difficult or impossible with humans in the mix. I'm pretty sure many drivers will try to bully the safer driving autonomous cars if they can.
LA already has the people and density to make transit useful. If everybody rode transit instead of driving (I mean everybody - your trash hauler would take your trash to the dump on transit!) there would be enough riders to profitably run the transit system LA needs for this to work. Of course everybody riding transit in that way isn't practical, but there is no reason with more investment in transit system AL couldn't get more riders.
If I understand your argument, higher density, less space for parking, better public transportation should help solve the lack of affordable housing. So why are Manhattan, SF, London, Hong Kong among the most expensive places in the world to live? Why is downtown <your city here> more expensive than the suburbs?
Your question is a little like asking "If chemotherapy cures cancer, then how come most people I know who have undergone chemotherapy tend to have cancer?" If the cities you mentioned hadn't undertaken some pro-density measures they would be even more unaffordable.
BTW if I sound like I'm anti-density because of the "cancer" metaphor, I'm not; sprawl is bad for the planet among other things, and well-planned walkable dense cities are the best way for a burgeoning human population to live in harmony with the planet and with ourselves.
No, its not like that. Dense, walkable cities create demand, chemotherapy doesn't create cancer. If LA were to create an ultra-dense core tomorrow, more people and companies would relocate there, bringing rents right back to the level they are now, probably higher. The only people losing out would be existing low-income people who got displaced.
NYC concrete jungle = "live in harmony with the planet"? Lol.
Because people are willing to pay more to live there. All of those places are distinctive because their environments are illegal to build now, so we haven't made more of them even while population grew and urbanized.
They're low density even if you account for increased travel radius due to cars. That means you have a smaller concentration of people for events/stores/restaurants/etc. which means you have fewer events/stores/restaurants/etc. Especially once you move away from the most common mainstream events/stores/restaurants/etc since those cater to a much smaller subset of the population (which in suburbs is too small to sustain a business).
> They're low density even if you account for increased travel radius due to cars.
What does it mean, exactly? How do you "account" for the increased travel radius? Do you divide by the distance or by the distance squared? Are you sure that in both cases the density is low? It does not seem so, to me.
Density can increase desirability, increasing demand beyond supply causing prices to rise. Also, as a selection bias we only hear about the really popular expensive cities and not the cities that are dense but less desirable and hence affordable. For every Hong Kong there is a Dongguang.
I can't find a source at the moment, but I have to believe there are more affordable housing units in Manhattan, SF, London and Hong Kong than in most other places in the world. Do you agree?
Hong Kong? Definitely not. London also looks pretty terrible (affordability-wise). SF surprised me but its probably just because local incomes are so high.[1]
This Tableau/OpenStreetMap chart isn't quite displaying correctly for me but it paints a bleak picture of California's affordability. Not sure if you can scroll over to NYC.[2]
This last source has London, NYC, and HK all in its "most expensive" 5 (from an odd assortment of cities) for rent-to-income ratio.[3]
Your comment reminds me of the parable about the dictator who noticed that the provinces with more sick people had more doctors, decided that doctors were the cause of illness, and summarily had all the doctors executed.
Try and use a little common sense about the direction of cause and effect here.
What you get is what you build. New roads just create more incentive for driving. It's been well documented over and over again that vehicle miles driven increases proportionally to roadway created. Lewis Mumford famously said “Building more roads to prevent congestion is like a fat man loosening his belt to prevent obesity.”
It's not the roads that cause traffic, it's the convenience of driving. To show how absurd the argument is, let's use it for housing - I'm sure it can be easily "documented" that building housing leads to higher population figures. So it must be bad, let's not do it!
You guys are saying the same thing. More roads make driving more convenient than other modes, increasing the incentive.
And yes, increasing housing supply lowers the price, and increases population. That's the point; to move people into the core who want to be there but otherwise couldn't afford it.
Convenience is only part of the story though. Price matters - and for me at least it is often as cheap or cheaper as a single person in a car to drive than get a train. I live in London, I can train anywhere pretty conveniently. But, somehow, if I decide that I want to go to Leeds next weekend to see my friend - it's £100.
Well, shit. The train is more convenient - but that's over twice the cost of petrol. Now imagine that I wanted to take another friend with me. It's absurd. The same scenario, but to a friend in Rugby (about half as far, different train line) costs me £23. Bargain!
There are multiple axes on which to nudge behaviour - and one of them is definitely price.
Trains don’t solve the last mile problem in metropolitan areas. It’s just not economically feasible to constantly run trains or buses that cover a metropolitan area with less than 1 mile spreads and acceptable intervals.
I’m being generous that ‘walk a mile’ at source and destination would pass muster for people with difficulties.
Making our infrastructure for cars better seems like a much better solution honestly.
The problem I have with mass transit is that outside of a couple major cities, the system is a horrible time waster. I used to take a bus to downtown job in my mid-sized Midwest city and it was like commuting 2x--I would have to drive to a park and ride, then wait for a bus, then board a bus and then go sit in traffic on a bus. I would arrive 40 mins later, dropped off near the building I worked at, but still had to walk outdoors in sub-zero temps and deal with low-level street crime at times, too. Yes, I got to read or do other crap on the bus, but all the colds and other sickness I caught didn't make up for that.
Contrast that with me just getting in my car and driving to the downtown parking garage and paying for parking at a place that has a skyway where my feet never touch the street at all, and you can understand the dilemma.
Then I got really smart and just stopped working downtown completely and got a job in the suburbs with free parking and while the traffic is still bad, it's nothing like heading downtown is.
So the article goes on to suggest expanding a bus network or other public transportation. In this manner, it increases the convenience of a more traffic-efficient bus and decreases the convenience of the less traffic-efficient car.
We're unfortunately in a place where public transit systems are starting to fall apart in many major US cities (I dont know if its all), such as Boston and NYC. At the same time, we're trying to reduce car usage. That's a pretty hard pill to swallow for many people.
If it was a cohesive strategy, where housing and transportation plans are moving together, there would be a lot less friction.
It's easy to prove that statement false just by getting outside of big cities. I'm sure if they expanded I-5 in Weed, CA from 4 lanes to 6 you'd see zero impact on traffic.
I don't think you disagree. If new roads make driving more convenient, doesn't it stand to reason that building new roads also increases the number of miles driven?
I'm willing to believe that, but it always sounds like nonsense to me. Normally, I hear people use it to describe the basic economics of a demand already greatly in excess of supply. If there's not enough food to go around, providing a little more food just means people will eat that additional food and they will still be hungry. We don't conclude that induced hunger is a thing.
Going back to traffic as the example, if I want to drive downtown to see a ballet but decide against it because traffic is bad, then they add more lanes and next year I do decide to drive to see that ballet, then I'm creating more traffic because they added more lanes. That demand wasn't induced -- it just transitioned from unmet demand to met demand.
If induced demand isn't nonsense, then I must be oversimplifying it. What am I missing?
Induced demand is unmet demand. Rural towns have no problem getting head of demand by building more. It is only in dense cities that nobody builds enough roads to meet the unmet demand for roads.
Of course I didn't mention cost above. A rural area can meet its demand with a cheap asphalt two lane road. A city would need dozens of levels of bridges at a much higher prize to get ahead of demand. Which is why cities should look to transit which is not cost effective for rural areas.
If it's nonsense, care to provide some supporting links? The author provided 4 links, one of which was from the California DOT supporting the statement.
These are dubious theories from decades ago, if taken literally, they'd mean we'd just need to remove all transport (public included) and there would be zero demand for them. Behind such absurd claims there's always a simplistic model with wrong assumptions and too few variables. Thankfully, new roads are still getting built despite every attempt to refer to these bogus paradoxes.
Vast majority of people don't drive just because a road got wider either. Build a 2x3 highway pointing nowhere and you'll get just a dozen of enthusiasts hold an illegal race on an empty road...
Moving from car centered sprawl, to dense transit oriented city isn't something that can be done in one step. It's immensely complex, and changing the direction of cities/governments is difficult even when everyone involved wants to change.
I'm reminded of whiteboard discussions where someone says we are 'here X' and we want to be 'there Y' and simply draws an arrow between the two and says 'get started'. Assuming that all the important decisions have been made. Not realizing that the all complexity is in the arrow.
That arrow going from car focused to transit focused cities needs to be broken down into individual steps and those steps is where we need the brainpower going.
It isn't that difficult. It is mainly about changing incentives and unleashing the autonomous forces of the population.
If you think about it primarily in terms of top-down planning, then yea it seems hard. But urban planning is not the solution. If anything it is one of the problems.
Here's a better list of options that don't involve mandates or grand designs.
-Increase taxes on land value to prevent idle speculation
-Remove taxes on buildings to encourage construction and remodelling
-Abolish parking minimums
-Abolish height restrictions
-Eliminate zoning laws that prevent multi-family or mixed-use development
-Reclaim poorly used space for pedestrian use, such as curbside parking which accounts for up to 10% of all urban land by area.
This is what runs through my mind everytime one of these articles shows up on HN.
There is no easy way to undo decades of urban sprawl across the US, especially when many cities have huge amounts of space around them to make this possible.
Also, one of those steps is probably sinking incredible amounts of money into initially barely used public transit which is bound to be politically unpopular.
You can also sink comparatively tiny amounts of money in to a network of physically separated, protected bike lanes - the kind you'd let your 6 year old use to ride to school.
Readit News
That's not an actionable proposal, the closest that gets to an actionable proposal is to demolish existing parking structures and either put public housing projects on top of them or incentivize real estate developers to build actual low-income housing.
Telling real estate developers to build low-income housing in areas where they could easily build high-income housing is, well, let's just say cities promise this all the time and developers never do it.
"Build more housing" is probably the answer to the homeless problem, but the ownership issue needs to be fixed first. The author made all these cute graphics of studio apartments superimposed on parking spaces. Cool, I like density, my condo is 650 sqft, like 3 or 4 spaces without egress.
Are we talking about literally taking parking from existing owners and building housing on the bare pads? Are we talking about building vertically on top of them and leaving the space underneath for cars? I'm not saying these are bad ideas. But can we fully bake them first? So a politician can actually hand it to a bunch of legislators and come up with something he can actually put on his platform?
Sure let's abolish the minimum. But that won't do a darned thing to help congestion and the housing shortage other than make LA more like Atlanta where there's an island of density around a bunch of ugly sprawl with more dense pockets springing up in the periphery. We're still waiting for market conditions to fix the city. And market forces don't care about what we want. Promising low-income housing in desirable real estate markets doesn't work but is the only thing politicians can put on their platforms that people will vote for.
1. No universal parking minimums. Developers choose how much parking the market requires.
2. Parking Maximums in Transit Oriented Communities.
3. All new parking garages must be built with a flat floor and a high enough ceiling to allow future conversion into office, studio, or living space.
4. 20% of parking spaces must include EV charging, with the rest install ready.
5. Garages must include an equivalent number of bicycle/micro-mobility parking spaces.
I would say suggestions 2-5 get progressively worse, but suggestion 1 is really good and backed up by the data presented.
It is much more cost effective and environmentally friendly to tear down parking garages and replace them with new construction.
For 1 - sure yea, I sorta doubt developers are going to voluntarily go below 1 space/unit in any sort of world because the value of the property takes a steep dive - but removing any commercial unit parking requirements or higher requirements for larger residential units makes sense. I think 2 is great - assuming exceptions are made to support park & ride demand. 4... Eh, EV is going to need to solve this through market forces so I think we can entirely ignore this (though I would love to see a lot more EVs I think this is point is entirely tangential to the main discussion) Lastly for 5 - nope. Every building ever has managed to sort this out naturally without regulation... leave this up to the market.
LA desperately needs for transit extensions.
Here in DC, we have "bike lockers" at the Metro transit stations so you can park your bike there and take the train into the city. However, these lockers aren't cheap, and there aren't many of them, and they're completely enclosed so they take up a fair amount of space. By contrast, in Germany you'll find many hundreds of bikes just lined up and parked outside the S-bahn station, without people having to pay a hefty rental fee.
Where I currently live developers are required by law to build. Certain percentage of square meters of social housing for every square meter of higher class housing they build. When my house got build they had to build social housing right next to it.
If I understood it correctly, the city ties this to the building permits. So if you wanna build new stuff you need to show that your plans include these social and affordable flats as well.
A city should in my opinion regulate to maximize the happieness of it’s inhabitants and not it’s developers (to some degree these two overlap anyways).
Certainly you could also try to change things via the market, but unless your city has a lack of developers why should you?
What ends up happening is that developers need to raise the rents on the non-subsidized units, because they're the ones that subsidize the subsidized ones. Which creates a constant upward pressure on housing prices that ends up squeezing everybody.
I'm not sure what the solution is, and I'm no economist, but it seems plausible. Looking at it from a 3,000 meter perspective, I would assume that, however well-intentioned San Francisco's housing policies were, we should probably expect that emulating them will yield the same outcomes that San Francisco is currently experiencing.
That's not to say that habitually segregating rich and poor people is a great idea, either. I would also suspect that emulating Detroit would also tend to lead to the sorts of outcomes that Detroit is currently experiencing.
Putting rich and poor people together maximize happiness?
If California got rid of prop 13 and allowed by-right zoning, market forces absolutely would build what we want.
Zoning isn't a cure-all. Housing is getting pretty expensive in Houston, one of the only large US cities with lax-to-non-existent zoning laws (and also high property taxes). Also, I think most people want some restrictions on what can be built where. I don't think many parents want strip clubs built next to preschools, and I don't think many people want a cement factory to be built across the street from a public park.
I also don't think many people want the zoning laws we have either. They just want to see their land value increase as fast as possible, but that's not really sustainable either.
I thought we might reach a tipping point as we reach a majority renter population. But Europe has been a majority renter society for a long time, and I would argue Europe's housing (to buy) is more unaffordable than US housing. Strangely, the price to earning on real estate makes 0 sense in Europe (even with respect to interest rates), and renting is somehow much more affordable in Europe (even though buying isn't).
There is always an X to be fixed first, and housing is never built.
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BTW I am a non car driver here
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zürich_model
Just because it's difficult and will require some pain in the short term, it doesn't mean we should do - and therefore improve - nothing.
Compared to other major US cities Los Angeles is truly dense (63% of LA is paved!). My favorite demonstrative anecdote—when approaching by air from the east the 'carpet of lights' starts to appear below about fifteen minutes prior to reaching LAX (which is on the Pacific shore). That's fifteen minutes at transport aircraft arrival speed. I go 'wow' every time I come into town at night if the views are clear.
Los Angeles is just massive, meanwhile its 'effective density' [my term] is reduced by the prevalence of quakes and the expense of taller structures¹.
It's a shame more folks cannot find a pattern of transit/cycling that works for them; the weather is so favorable and the topography is bike-friendly, outside of the canyons/SaMo Mtns), but so many people must live where it's more affordable while working where the businesses are (historically high-rent areas). This is an urban planning trope, so nothing new about that but LA is doubling-down on that pattern lately with the genesis of "Silicon Beach" these past few years.
(me: LA transplant (10+ years) here and I use transit/cycle exclusively for the work week & for more than half of my weekend activities.)
¹—I'd expect we have zoning that impedes "increased density + lower parking minimums" but admittedly I cannot speak to that point directly.
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Have you ever heard of a banana shortage crisis or a jeans shortage crisis in the US? No you haven't. The reason is because market forces are able to adjust to changes in market demand. In housing, those market forces are bottled up and stifled, preventing investments, preventing innovation, preventing progress, preventing better solutions. We really really need to start looking at regulations and find ways to get rid of the ones causing all these problems.
ADDED: We've seen very little actual VC money or Research and development go into improving the cost of creating Shelter (In fact, we haven't made any improvements in this in the last 50 to 100 years adjusted for inflation). Much of this is due to regulations. Other industries can find ways to reduce cost but the mountain of housing regulations prevent any and all progress in these areas. I'd argue Housing is one of the most critical areas that human should be trying to progress in, as it's most important for human survival.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Banana_Exporting_Coun...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Reputatio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana
As a pragmatist, one of my favorite phrases I say quite often: "The difference between theory and reality is that in theory there is no difference."
The article is excellent expose of an issue and a solution. I hope they would include specific things we can do to help improve the situation. I'm part of California YIMBY, which promotes legislation that helps ease these issues.
You mention zoning laws in particular. Those were designed for specific reasons so what about them would you change? Surely you aren't suggesting just to get rid of them all?
Personally, I'd rather pay 200K for a home, rather than 1 million $ for the same home but with zoning laws. Now, I don't know if it's a 5 to 1 difference in every case. But, we all know 5 to 1 difference in cost is not at all unusual on a per sq ft basis.
Regulations have undeniably caused harm in California.
Yet, an elephant lurks. Housing is a massive system dependent upon the price of homes/land continuously rising. History has shown that when that doesn't happen, it is disastrous.
Maybe the market disentangles that, but by god would it be destructive.
[0] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts...
On the other hand, so do externalities in the absence of regulation to internalize them. Real markets quite often don't approximate the idealized way markets should work without lots of help.
> Have you ever heard of a banana shortage crisis [...] in the US?
“Yes, we have no bananas today” is actually a reference to such a crisis.
"Blokable Closes $23 Million in Series A Financing to Lower the Cost of Developing, Building, and Owning Multi-Family Housing in West Coast Communities"
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blokable-closes-23-...
Specific regulations may have problematic impacts (or positive ones, or some mix).
Statements about "regulation" in abstract are meaningless, except to subtract from the idea that specific insight matters, and add to the idea all one needs to approach any given problem is a general ideological approach.
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We also need to recognize that trickle down economics doesn't work when it comes to housing just like it doesn't work when it comes other areas of economics. A 1500 square foot high rise 1 bedroom condo with an in-unit washer and dryer is so different from a 200 square foot unit that doesn't even have an in-unit shower that they function as completely separate markets.
Those two things mean we likely need more regulation not less. Although that doesn't mean the regulation we have currently is necessarily good. Removing regulation regarding parking might still be a smart move.
"If rich people can't buy ferraris, and there is a limit to 100 BMWs and 100 civics, then rich people will boost the price of all the BMWs and Civics and all you can buy is really old broken down chevrolets, if you can buy one at all."
"But I bought my civic when it was an affordable price, and I have a special old person subsidized gas price, why do we need build more civics, ferraris and BMWs for all of these new immigrants?! Why can't they just stay in their own country?"
The only viable solution to reduce the cost of housing is prefabricated, but moderately sized apartments/multi-family homes. The way you get this is not by unilaterally removing regulation, but by getting rid of local regulation in favor of national regulation.
Yes, I agree, totally. Except where this is impossible.
You can't "free market" the cars out of cities. Nobody wants them gone, and everyone has vested interests in them staying: real estate, construction, parking+traffic violation revenue, car owners, car manufacturers, insurance companies, lawyers... Massive amounts of money flow through the co-existence of cars with cities.
The market's trend is to exacerbate the car problem. How will gutting regulation reverse it all?
I’d argue that that is exactly why we need regulation for housing. It’s just the form of regulation that has to change.
No, but I've heard of gruesome conditions for child laborers in sweatshops and I've heard of banana monoculture that has resulted in disease and threatens extinction of the crop.
We should all push for better and more adaptable regulations that aim to minimize the damages caused by capitalism and enhance its benefits. But regulations as a concept is not the problem, only the implementations.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/government-confirms-ban-o...
> Mr Howard told banana growers in north Queensland after the cyclone that he would not allow imports of fresh bananas until the industry got back on its feet.
> But he went further on the sensitive subject of importing fresh product, indicating the Philippines government's long push to export bananas to Australia may never succeed.
It is very easy to make these glib "just remove regulation and let the problem solve itself" comments, without really addressing what that reality actually looks like. We aren't talking about a city of single family homes, we're talking about family homes largely no longer existing since lawns, property separation, "extra" rooms, "extra" walls, etc are all inefficiencies that will be eliminated by the market sooner or later.
So, sure, run housing like bananas or jeans but don't be surprised when dwellings start to look less like homes and more like a efficient storage medium for human creatures.
Dead Comment
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Metro_Rail
I live in Toronto where the subway is extremely limited in terms number of lines/paths, but at least they go to mostly the right places. Public transit is definitely a second-class-citizen, but subways going downtown are full, every day. The go-train also does a semi-passable job of enabling longer commutes... but we still have a LONG way to go. Unfortunately, each successive mayor has a completely different vision,and fights with the province to overturn the previous plan. At this point, had we picked any one option twenty years ago, even if sub-optimal, we would've had something. Ottawa seemed to do a better job with their LRT even though they had to make it through more layers of government (municipal, provincial, and national), but it's just been a lot quieter job. In Toronto, it's each mayor's main campaigning platform so it has to be a sensational proposal of "change" :-/
But in the end Americans on average don't believe in spending money on public services in a systematic way. They build a light rail here, a high speed train there, at great expense but without any kind of systems thinking. Then they are surprised that the system doesn't get used which confirms the view that public spending is a waste. I have no idea how to get out of that cycle other than a much more wide spread adoption of remote work maybe. Self driving cars will make things just worse because they make even longer commutes possible and sitting in traffic won't be as stressful for the driver.
Where bus use is sufficiently heavy, Metro is planning (or is already building) rail lines to be constructed over the next 40 years as funding permits.
Compared to 80's Seoul, LA metro's coverage doesn't seem very bad. Give it some time while heavily disincentivizing use of cars. At least, LA has a central public authority on mass transit for 10 millions, which is a much better situation than bay.
Abolishing parking will never happen in LA, because that would force people to get off the roads. It's a car culture here.
Also, its a good idea .. everyone in my building seems to buy their porche or audi and park it in the middle of their allocated two parking spots in the ramp below the apartments.
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In order for a public transit system to be convenient you need a LOT of density. You also need speed. The two goals are fundamentally at odds with each other. That’s why a lot of people prefer cars. No one likes traffic or emissions, and cars are way more likely to kill you, but damn are cars convenient even in urban environments.
Any plan like this can have all these numbers talking about how much space could be freed up but they need to address this fundamental problem, and this article failed to.
Now what interesting is the rise of self driving cars. I’ve often see paid parking lots and think within 20-30 years they will be out of biz. A few large operators will emerge and park their cars overnight at some owned large lot far out of the city to recharge, maintain, etc, and there won’t be much need anymore. So that could be a path to what author is talking about, long term. Of course does nothing for parking lot owners who just hold onto the property speculating...
They want removal of regulation regarding parking spots (free market), but building of rent-controlled social housing on the freed space (non-free market).
Changing LA's car mentality isn't going to happen overnight but it has to start somewhere.
You should read the article.
compare the two first images on section 3 https://noparkinghere.com/#03 to understand why people take the car instead of walking to what is supposed to be next-door stores. Then remind that with actual density, your local gym/church/cafe will be actually be local, as in no need to drive to it and you still get there under 5min.
Also, the fundamental way to have density and speed is Transit-Oriented Development. Basically super-high density within walking distance of stations. That way the experience of walking to a station, taking the train, and walking to a destination near the end station is really good. The places between the stations can be lower density without really changing anything.
We’ll have empty cars driving around the city to pick some up. Causing transit. It’s the same effect Uber is causing to cities. More transit and people taking less mass transit.
The scenario that I read from urbanists is that people will continue to own an autonomous car, and the car will drive you to work, drive back home to pick up your partner, drive her/him to work, drive back to pick up the kids, then drive them to school, and on and on. So more empty cars on the road.
While I see autonomous cars as a cool tech, I don’t see urbanists thinking it will solve urban planning.
Likewise they will react more predictably. We won't have an idiot cutting lanes, or tapping his brakes since he can't maintain a constant speed. Apparently most traffic issues are caused by a few bad actors having an over-sized effect.
So I think even with more cars, we can get better flow, which is what traffic is all about. But it will be difficult or impossible with humans in the mix. I'm pretty sure many drivers will try to bully the safer driving autonomous cars if they can.
At odds? Aren't they perfectly complementary? The closer things are together, the faster it is to get between them.
There are also a number of new lines and extensions coming up: https://www.metro.net/interactives/datatables/project/.
The Crenshaw line is close to opening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crenshaw/LAX_Line
BTW if I sound like I'm anti-density because of the "cancer" metaphor, I'm not; sprawl is bad for the planet among other things, and well-planned walkable dense cities are the best way for a burgeoning human population to live in harmony with the planet and with ourselves.
NYC concrete jungle = "live in harmony with the planet"? Lol.
They're low density even if you account for increased travel radius due to cars. That means you have a smaller concentration of people for events/stores/restaurants/etc. which means you have fewer events/stores/restaurants/etc. Especially once you move away from the most common mainstream events/stores/restaurants/etc since those cater to a much smaller subset of the population (which in suburbs is too small to sustain a business).
What does it mean, exactly? How do you "account" for the increased travel radius? Do you divide by the distance or by the distance squared? Are you sure that in both cases the density is low? It does not seem so, to me.
And make property taxes progressive. The first 100k in value is tax free, then a higher rate on each progressive 100k.
Make it so locals love it when a billionaire buys property in their neighbourhood and doesn’t live in it.
This Tableau/OpenStreetMap chart isn't quite displaying correctly for me but it paints a bleak picture of California's affordability. Not sure if you can scroll over to NYC.[2]
This last source has London, NYC, and HK all in its "most expensive" 5 (from an odd assortment of cities) for rent-to-income ratio.[3]
[1]https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/gmaps_rankings.js...
[2]https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/07/heres-the-share-of-income-th...
[3]https://www.weetas.com/article/rent-income-ratio-17-major-ci...
Try and use a little common sense about the direction of cause and effect here.
What you get is what you build. New roads just create more incentive for driving. It's been well documented over and over again that vehicle miles driven increases proportionally to roadway created. Lewis Mumford famously said “Building more roads to prevent congestion is like a fat man loosening his belt to prevent obesity.”
It's not the roads that cause traffic, it's the convenience of driving. To show how absurd the argument is, let's use it for housing - I'm sure it can be easily "documented" that building housing leads to higher population figures. So it must be bad, let's not do it!
And yes, increasing housing supply lowers the price, and increases population. That's the point; to move people into the core who want to be there but otherwise couldn't afford it.
Mission success I guess?
Exactly. Roads make driving more convenient.
Build trains and that makes taking the train more convenient so you get more of that.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Well, shit. The train is more convenient - but that's over twice the cost of petrol. Now imagine that I wanted to take another friend with me. It's absurd. The same scenario, but to a friend in Rugby (about half as far, different train line) costs me £23. Bargain!
There are multiple axes on which to nudge behaviour - and one of them is definitely price.
I’m being generous that ‘walk a mile’ at source and destination would pass muster for people with difficulties.
Making our infrastructure for cars better seems like a much better solution honestly.
Contrast that with me just getting in my car and driving to the downtown parking garage and paying for parking at a place that has a skyway where my feet never touch the street at all, and you can understand the dilemma.
Then I got really smart and just stopped working downtown completely and got a job in the suburbs with free parking and while the traffic is still bad, it's nothing like heading downtown is.
If it was a cohesive strategy, where housing and transportation plans are moving together, there would be a lot less friction.
That's a tautology, roads are a convenience for driving.
Going back to traffic as the example, if I want to drive downtown to see a ballet but decide against it because traffic is bad, then they add more lanes and next year I do decide to drive to see that ballet, then I'm creating more traffic because they added more lanes. That demand wasn't induced -- it just transitioned from unmet demand to met demand.
If induced demand isn't nonsense, then I must be oversimplifying it. What am I missing?
Of course I didn't mention cost above. A rural area can meet its demand with a cheap asphalt two lane road. A city would need dozens of levels of bridges at a much higher prize to get ahead of demand. Which is why cities should look to transit which is not cost effective for rural areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox
But more roads increase the convenience of driving, no?
Anyway no ones mentioned induced demand, which is the relevant term
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
The GP's point is nonsense, but people most definitely do start families based on the overall cost of having kids, and housing plays a major role.
I'm reminded of whiteboard discussions where someone says we are 'here X' and we want to be 'there Y' and simply draws an arrow between the two and says 'get started'. Assuming that all the important decisions have been made. Not realizing that the all complexity is in the arrow.
That arrow going from car focused to transit focused cities needs to be broken down into individual steps and those steps is where we need the brainpower going.
If you think about it primarily in terms of top-down planning, then yea it seems hard. But urban planning is not the solution. If anything it is one of the problems.
Here's a better list of options that don't involve mandates or grand designs.
-Increase taxes on land value to prevent idle speculation
-Remove taxes on buildings to encourage construction and remodelling
-Abolish parking minimums
-Abolish height restrictions
-Eliminate zoning laws that prevent multi-family or mixed-use development
-Reclaim poorly used space for pedestrian use, such as curbside parking which accounts for up to 10% of all urban land by area.
There is no easy way to undo decades of urban sprawl across the US, especially when many cities have huge amounts of space around them to make this possible.
Also, one of those steps is probably sinking incredible amounts of money into initially barely used public transit which is bound to be politically unpopular.