Parking and privilege

Reflections of the privilege of having a place to store your private vehicle in public.

Parking and privilege

Is parking (car storage) simply a management issue?  Many seem to think that if we can just price parking correctly, or allocate it correctly, then we’ll all be able to have our parking and eat it too.  It seems that people are getting wise to the idea that free, unregulated parking is not city-friendly.  But is the answer simply better regulation?  

There are three things about parking which often go unaddressed.  First, the space required to store two vehicles makes a decent one-bedroom urban apartment.  Second, walking through parking lots and garages is a life-draining experience.  Rarely is a parking lot anything more than hot asphalt, which will never compete with walking down a street full of stores.  Third is privilege.  Parking in cities is the provenance of those who can afford it.  Everyone else is stuck by the side of the road waiting in the rain for the bus.

This leads me to believe that we need to stop spinning our wheels with parking management.  We just need less space for cars so we can put our resources into building proper cities. And we certainly do not need our tax dollars paying for parking calendars!