Urbanism & Infrastructure 1. Parking: Introduction

The New Urbanism differs in several ways from the traditional settlement models from which it springs. No other single factor is as important in forcing variations from traditional practice as the necessity to deal with cars in quantity; and no aspect of that affects the urban fabric as much as parking. Parking must be be handled with both firmness and imagination if the virtues of traditional urbanism are not to be altogether scoured away by it. The inept provision of parking is the most critical characteristic of the dismal landscape of sprawl, the opposite of traditional urbanism.  Parking lots on the street fronts of stores form the image of the strip highway; cars parked in front yards are what give higher density housing its bad reputation. Such streetscapes are the essence of James Howard Kunstler's National Automobile Slum, because in both cases the parking destroys through intimidation and dessication the pedestrian animation of the street, that sense of life which traditionally is the compensation for loss of landscape and private yard. Parking dissects the complex body of the living traditional city, forcing its pieces apart by lowering density. More than Zoned Density or the Floor Area Ratio, parking determines the actual density, which is to say the intensity and proximity of human activities. Where land value is low enough that parking must be on the surface, only a certain residual density is possible. Where the value is such that parking can be built-in under the building, the density can be higher. When it is such that a parking garage can be amortized, density is yet another increment higher. Overall the pattern of parking type and density form a stair-step function. Suburban Quantities, Fewer Spaces In the service of its larger visions the New Urbanism offers several tactical propositions regarding parking. First, that except in taxi- and transit-saturated urban cores, it must be provided in conventional suburban quantities. (But these quantities can be achieved with fewer spaces by managing both the supply and demand side of the parking equation.) Second, that in the case of mixed uses, it may be reduced somewhat, but never by more than 25 percent overall in an area. (The size of, and distance between, parking areas affect the perception of quantity, which is as important as the actual count.) Third, that this still-onerous amount must for the most part be masked away from the sidewalk, because parking in quantity, by being oppressively boring, stifles pedestrian life. This masking is accomplished not by walls (which are only slightly less oppressive, no matter how clever their materials and patterns) but by inhabited buildings. There are two partial exceptions to the rule of masking. One is parking on the street, which actually improves pedestrian life both by protecting it from moving traffic and by slowing that traffic due to reduced street width. (Again, smart management of on-street parking is as crucial as the mere provision of it.) The other is the paved plaza, a well-defined public space that sometimes happens to have cars parked within it, but only among the other activities it sponsors and accomodates. This series of Technical Pages will address the following issues: the stair-step function of surface/covered/structured parking; the screening-away of parking in inner-block courts, alleys and lanes; the specific design of garages, rear-loaded and front; the design of specialized masking buildings; and, finally, the design of parallel and head-in parking on streets, roads, boulevards and plazas.