[sustran] Re: On vs off street parking or simply reducing on street parking.

[robert cowherd]

Walter,

In the Be-Careful-What-You-Wish-For-Department:

Brookline, Massachusetts, the idyllic inner-ring street-car suburb of
Boston, has long complemented its relatively compact housing fabric and
their extensive light-rail with a prohibition against overnight on-street
parking. So far so good.

But it is still America, and no on-street parking does not necessarily mean
less parking. 

Wanting to be less like Boston and more like similarly, or more, affluent
suburbs further out, Brookline has steadily increased its requirements for
residential on-site parking and recently raised it up from 1-1.5 to 2-2.3
per unit. This may work fine for the predominant single-family typology of
the outer suburbs but it has made it unlikely that anything resembling the
street-car suburb typology of row-houses, and small footprint three- to
four-story apartment buildings can be built. Small yards and gardens have
been shrinking and disappearing for years in the quest to load every parcel
with one more parking space. This is where the relative efficiency of
on-street parking (no driveway, shared parking) becomes evident.

At the risk of being accused of tolerance for complex realities, I am
comfortable keeping the goal of "car-free cities" near the top of my list
and still support on-street parking as a preferable alternative to some of
the other available options for cities.

Robert Cowherd
MIT

4/26/2006