First off, I want to point out that I am totally on team /c/fuckcars. I highly believe in transit, walking, and biking.
That being said, I think it’s fair to say that:
- Cars aren’t fully going away anytime soon
- Even in our wildest dreams, it still makes sense for cars to be usable in some way, just that the other transport methods are highly prioritized.
So the discussion I want to have is about parking garages, and the hate I see towards them from the urbanist community.
I feel like parking garages vaguely align with urbanist views, because they are high density, and they allow someone to drive to a general area after which they can do the rest of their transportation via other methods.
To put it into perspective, I’d rather have 1-3 dense parking garages in a neighborhood than have street parking along all the roads plus wide open parking lots around grocery stores and whatnot.
I understand this is a lesser of the two evils discussion but it seems to me like parking garages are the clear winner.
Too many people who oppose parking garages are stuck with black and white thinking when the world is mostly gray. I can agree that we should work for a future where people can live in a nice city with no need for cars, but you have to agree that we’re not there yet. Getting there is a very long process, perhaps a continuous process, and at least for US cities is many decades away. We need to be able to make improvements, even when they are not the ultimate goal
Many US citiea currently have large, surface level parking lots throughout downtown. Some well placed garages could free up that land and improve density. We will never be rid of private vehicle ownership