(11-01-2015, 11:46 PM)eizenstriet Wrote: Lots of those houses you’re speaking of have been “viable” right next to the central part of the city for a century or so. The successive owners have built admirable communities, and aren’t about to surrender their investments, their roots, and their faculties of critical thinking just because you in your own interests would like to label them “unviable”.
OK, so if we can't expand the geographic scope of growth from downtowns into adjacent neighbourhoods, then we're going to need to build much denser and taller in the downtown.
(11-01-2015, 11:46 PM)eizenstriet Wrote: You seem now to be acknowledging that there will be “spillover parking”. So can we now lighten up on the warranty that high density near transit will not have parking demand? I mean, you know that a single-family detached house behind The Red has had its “BY” become a parking lot for that building. You know that people may contend with 144 Park or the Kaufman Lofts because there is not provision for their second cars. You know that residents of The Bauer Lofts complain of inadequate visitor parking. So let’s grant that “NIMBYs” are not always just paranoid, and that they may dare to suggest that development be prepared to sustain its own attachment to the automobile.
I don't buy into the premise behind the term, namely that there is some fixed amount of demand for parking and that if the building doesn't accommodate all of it on site, then the parking will necessarily go into adjacent streets. I think that the amount and cost of parking provided shapes the demand and impacts how people choose to get around, in particular if they live or work on the site. Visitor parking is an interesting point, and I think it's by far the most reasonable application of parking requirements. But it can also be solved using shared parking garages at market rates. If we put a price on curbside parking, perhaps in concert with a resident permit system, that would reduce the parking externalities.