How Parking Requirements Shape Cities

Parking lot obstacle course
Before I became a Cycling Instructor, I received training in subdivision design and drafting and worked on the design side of home building and renovations. Unless you had reason to wade into it, the rules for things like required parking in the land use bylaw are unknown to most people. An article I read recently (This little-known rule shapes parking in America. Cities are reversing it.) made me go digging to see what the situation is in Calgary. 

It is obvious to anyone who lives in, travels through or even looks at a map of Calgary that this city is very auto-dependent: we have massive urban sprawl, low density and very few real suburb communities. Most of the residential communities have a high concentration of cul-de-sacs and crescents with uniform zoning and many cookie-cutter homes which are indistinguishable. While these areas seem pretty utopian, they actually result in more auto-dependency, lack of community connections, and a poor human experience overall. These quiet side streets all feed to bigger roads, which in turn feed to major roads: pedestrians are forced to travel in close proximity to significant auto traffic and there are few destinations within the community to walk to. For cyclists, this kind of design means that there's few places to ride where mingling with autos isn't required and again, there's few destinations of interest in their home community. Since residents in these areas have nothing in their communities to hold their interest, and an unpleasant walking or biking experience, they get an auto. Of course, most people don't live alone, so typically each person of driving age in a home has their own auto, leading to multiple autos per household. When those autos leave the residential areas, they travel to businesses, recreation centres, sports venues, etc and parking must be managed. 

It's easy to see how the auto-dependency became a thing: a new mall is planned for bare land where the zoning is for commercial, so there's a requirement for a certain number of parking stalls, which are placed so that all motorists can easily access the building. This means that usually the building is surrounded by parking, meaning anyone who comes as a pedestrian must walk across a parking lot with no purpose-built pedestrian walkways, trees, or interest, leading to an unpleasant experience for the pedestrian. Most likely this new mall is massive, and a long ways from dense residential, so the pedestrian now has to carry multiple bags and packages back across the parking lot and walk a long ways home with them because they didn't just pop in for a small shopping trip. This leads to less pedestrians and more autos. If you need an auto to get to work from home, to go shopping for groceries or clothing or to go to the library, movie theatre or any restaurants, all those places will need to have parking or they won't have enough customers to survive. 

Single-use zoning blocks and the "small street to feeder road" design of most residential areas forces auto-dependency around residential areas. Increasing auto-dependency creates a need for new buildings (residential, commercial or industrial) to have places to park autos for staff, customers or residents. Off-street parking requirements for residences leads to larger lot sizes and/or expensive parking structures, driving up the cost of housing as well as urban sprawl. Parking lots create unpleasant experiences for those outside of autos, leading to more desire to use autos... and on it goes. 

But urban planners are starting to realize that all this auto-dependency creates many problems: air pollution, collisions, obesity, lack of connectedness in communities and challenges for low-income people who struggle to afford a home or auto. Can all of this be changed just by reducing the required auto parking places? Sure, it can! If driving an auto, or more correctly parking an auto becomes more difficult, people will have no choice but to find alternate forms of transportation. Want to go out for dinner, but the restaurant only has 10 parking spots? You may need to park quite a ways away and walk over. If you've already parked a ways away, you'll perhaps wander into that clothing store between the restaurant and your auto. Next time you want to go to that restaurant, perhaps you'll leave your auto at home completely and take a taxi or ride your bike. If your home area is zoned for higher density and fewer auto parking spots, perhaps you didn't even have an auto to begin with, saving you the cost of buying, insuring and maintaining that auto, freeing up money to spend on other things, like in that clothing store. 

I will never suggest that anyone should go auto-free. My family has 2 autos: one - a truck - is parked all winter and rarely gets used during camping season and the other - an almost-everything small SUV - is used for big grocery runs, doing errands, transporting bikes when the ride starts far away, and for trips out of town for skiing, hiking or visiting relatives. We put an average of 9,000km on this auto each year. I already ride my bike or walk to get small amounts of groceries, go to the library, some medical appointments, and some errands. If parking was more difficult - or I had to pay to park - I would probably do more frequent grocery shops to keep them small, use more transit or taxi for in-town trips. I would consider car-pools, shuttle buses and other options for out of town trips. 

Less auto use means less air pollution, less traffic congestion, fewer collisions, lower stress and more connection with other humans and the world around us. Calgary's urban planners are making changes to improve the city around us by reducing parking requirements for businesses moving into existing buildings, for higher-density residential developments and by trying to encourage multi-use developments in previously single-use areas (ie a building with retail and residential). Encouraging higher density development near transit, as well as large commercial areas or business hubs, while simultaneously reducing the auto parking increases the affordability of housing, improves the walkability and encourages less auto use. All of this is happening in Calgary and I'm glad to see it! 

The picture above was taken in a mall parking lot: the area used by this bike course represented about 30 parking stalls. Imagine how many bikes could be parked in the area instead. Imagine how many people could visit the mall if this space was a residential tower. Imagine how much more pleasant it would be to walk from the school in the background to the mall for a student to work if the mall didn't need to be so far away from the road or was a park-like feel with trees and paving stone walkways. All of this is actually happening at this site as the mall is being completely redeveloped: 200+ residential units are being built, auto parking is being cut down in number and the human experience is being prioritized with living landscaping and bike parking stalls.

In Conclusion

Did you realize how planning for autos creates a cycle of auto-dependence and perpetuates the worst parts of auto use? Unless it's your job to plan communities, you've probably never needed to think about it and that's ok. I am happy to hear that cities around the world are proving that they can look to the future, and plan for a city which has fewer autos, more trips by transit, walking and biking. I hope that you can recognize and appreciate the efforts that are going on behind the scenes in Calgary, too. 

With good planning and Calgarians getting on board with the plan, we will see more full bike racks and fewer autos in our city. 

- Melissa Malejko, Owner of Safer Cycling Calgary
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