Quote:
Originally Posted by timun
powderjunkie, I think you're kinda talking at cross-purposes here. You say that the parking lots on 9th Ave are "stifling" development, in that "if you can turn a tidy profit with parking it dramatically decreases incentive to build something", and you note that the City controls the "powerful lever" of parking supply, but...
... how else do you disincentivize that land remaining parking other than reducing the profitability of parking by increasing the supply? If you decrease the supply of parking the price goes up and there's all the incentive in the world to just leave those parcels as parking lots forever and ever.
I'm supportive of your position that ideally that land is used for something other than some crappy parking lots, but I think you're mischaracterizing the situation as 'we' (the City) having "ruined the public realm" there. As you say, it has been nothing but parking lots for 50+ years, and before that was rail yards. It has literally never, ever been anything else since 1883.
What do you think we do to incentivize develop of lands like that, or disincentivize keeping them the way they are? I honestly don't really have an answer, short of expropriation and the City/CMLC developing the land. To bizaro86's point though, it's not as thought there isn't already a crapload of vacant space downtown, so I'm not sure what you would develop there instead...? At this point it doesn't seem economically viable.
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It's immensely complicated - I could write you a novel and barely scratch the surface; there's lots of great discussion on these topics at Skyrise Cities forums.
I was careful to preface my original comments with 'generally' for a reason - it's pretty tough to discuss individual parcels, but the city can absolutely do a better job of defining and enforcing a more holistic strategy here. As a society we really need to re-evaluate our ####ed up relationship with cars/traffic/parking, but it's a political football since most people are incapable of critical thinking.
Profitable parking lots aren't a problem; undeveloped lots aren't necessarily a problem either, but we can definitely do a better job of the hostility they add to our public realm.
To bring it full circle to the original point - surface parking reduces the quantity/concentration/duration of people spending time downtown. Auto commuters tend to disperse towards the perimeter (often via +15) spending very little time in any public space.
Transit riders concentrate towards 7 and 8 ave; even if their behaviour is limited to immediately boarding a train/bus, they've still contributed some degree of presence/vibrancy. Peds/cyclists are sorta similar; whatever direction they go they are contributing some degree of vibrancy. There is probably data to back this up, but these folks are probably more likely to interact with central businesses (grab a pint/etc), which leads towards development (eventually).
It's not about some big dramatic change (though it would be nice) - it's just slightly adjusting the taps to encourage better outcomes. We can still have
lots of parking, but let's try to avoid having
tons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DownInFlames
In the same vein, single-family homes should be taxed higher than multi-story condos. I doubt that would ever happen though.
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They generally are, but we could certainly tweak the calculation to more heavily weight lot size.