[Bunk]

^ Yep, that's why improving transit, improving walkability and cycleability are such big priorities. Things that will also happen to benefit the inner city a lot.

There are in fact significant geographic and economic factors that have led to high parking prices. Calgary does have one of the most concentrated workforces of any city - the energy sector likes to cluster like no other. As a result Calgary's downtown core is just as dense as the cities you list. Even with the restricted parking policy, if we had half the office space we did downtown, parking would be much less expensive. In addition, there are limited roadway links in and out of the core, because of the intact communities around it as well as the river.

Even if we did build way, way more parking, we would have to expand our road capacity to actually bring more people in and out of the core. That would involve bulldozing existing inner city communities. Lots of US cities went that route, but I don't think that results in a better city. At one point, where you live was proposed to be an elevated expressway in Calgary called the "south sowntown by-pass". Other expressways like the "downtown penetrator" along the Bow River were also proposed. Instead, the City chose the alternative which was to get more people (in a spread out city) to take transit - one of the only ways to do this is to restrict parking.