#depaving

Good news about parking?

Estimates vary on just how much parking exists in the United States. One study by the University of California in 2011 put the number of parking spaces at 800 million (three for every vehicle on the road), covering 25,000 square miles of land. Other estimates range as high as a staggering 2 billion parking spaces—or eight parking spots for every vehicle. What this means is that towns and cities have devoted an enormous amount of precious land to parking spaces that go unused anywhere from two-thirds to seven-eighths of the time.

Photo by the author as part of the #BlackFridayParking campaign. Taken on Friday, November 29, 2019 at noon, Keizer Station in Keizer, Oregon.

In planner-speak, we are “overbuilt.” These parking spaces were expensive to create in the first place and, as we’ve shown, the replacement bills coming due for taxpayers could be impossibly high. There is some good news, though, which is that the movement to #EndParkingMinimums is gaining momentum. Local governments everywhere are striking these costly requirements from their codes...or relaxing them, which is at least a step in the right direction.

And yet, looked at another way, we are underbuilt. This is because all the land tied up in parking spaces could be used in far better ways. As Joni Mitchell sang back in 1970, we’ve paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Mitchell was right on another count too: we usually don’t know what we’ve got ‘til it’s gone. That’s the stage many communities are in now, as residents look around and see asphalt wastelands where once life had been (in the form of houses, historic buildings, small businesses, or green spaces).

Which brings us to our second bit of good news: namely, that more and more of these same communities are converting their parking wastelands back into more valuable assets. In some cases, they are de-paving parking lots so paradise can grow again as parks and urban farms. Other towns and cities are repurposing surface parking and parking garages into much-needed revenue generators, including housing and retail space.