Publishing Industry Insider interviews industry updates on bestseller list find all of our podcast by downloading the free cspan now app or wherever you get your podcast and on our website cspan. Org podcast. Henry grab bar is a writer journalist and urban analyst who is also a terrific writer with an ability for complex urban issues into accessible narratives which shed light on the intricate dynamics that shape their cities this is one of them we see the troubles we are running into every day. We wonder how to fix them is this what we should and other problems its veryco complex and very c convoluted and everything is connected. And his new book paradise offers a compelling explanation of forces that shape their cities from the rights of the automobile to the challenges and the urgent climate conscious urban planning please help me welcome to the men who write sentences like this i love the sentence. Wonder why market is so important youre driving around you are sweating you want a parking spot so bad. He writes a parking space is nothing less than the link between driving and life itself. [laughter] is help me welcome henry grabar. Topic. Good evening. Thanks for that introduction. Thanks for upstaging me. [laughter] i know we just went to spend the next hour watching falcon beating. This wont take long im just going to explain the entire history of the american urban environment to you. [laughter] and thank you for coming i am really proud to be in the lecture today. Everything i have heard about albert suggests he would have loved this topic and would have been so ready to jump into this conversation and argue with all of us about parking all night i have no doubt we could do that. So i want to start was something i will break with the elevated theme that characterize the intellectual life of mercantile library. Seven season reality tv bonanza parking wars. [laughter] haif you have not seen it for te most part the show follows the workers of the Philadelphia Parking Authority as a ticket andd show philadelphians carson generally provoke sometimes experience extraordinarily level of mental anguish. As you can probably imagine when he started writing a book about parking status as a psychic third rail i felt blessed until there dozens of hours of footage. T [laughter] escort the tension in this show revolved around an unresolved question at the heart of the american urban experience. To whom this parking belong . Who owns it and under what conditions can it change hands . Two decades ago donald shoop the pope of parking studies the first albert pyle urban lecture speaker observed thinking about parking takes place in the reptilian cortex. The part of the brain set to govern aggression, territoriality and visual display. I believe science has moved on from this concept but holds true for parking. Sitting here in this Beautiful Library or move from the stress of the road answer to the question of parking ownership is simplebl. We set the public, it belongs to all of us from behind the wheel of your car you might see iotherwise. You might say it belongs to me. You see this assumption on neighborhood forms like nextdoor or an unfamiliar parked car at a suburban curb can become the days subject of conversation. Oc many sittings including cincinnati issue local parkingas permits as a way of legitimizing this claim. The parking belongs only to the people who live here. Even your runofthemill single home family driveway plays a similar role it offers access to private garage but it reserves a piece of the curb for you. After a snowstorm and more finegrained system of curb ownership takes place in which the person who shovels the spot gets to keep it. There is a blog in chicago that catalogs the fantastic array of objects used in this practice folding chairs, childrens toys, heavy machinery, nativity figurines. Always imagine the implication that you or your car would be beaten with the object in question if you were to take the spot perhaps some of you have experienced this on one side or the other i dont know which. Thats hard to imagine another domain in which a City Government implicitly endorses the delay of justice but thats what dibs or saves these is. When a boston tried to limit this practice to 48 hours after a snowfall city councilman protested. The issue speaks to the basic principle what it means to be an american he said. The gold of minor and the pioneers, residents have a right to stake their claims. I will not surprise you learn dozens of americans are killed over parking disputes every year. I submit to you the most important driver of parking anger is a deep sense of confusion over ownership in following from that conflicting standards of entitlement and behavior. Is parking public . Private . Somewhere in between . Conceive there are other med things about parking stop and driving directions so it feels like a time penalty. The rules are confusing and so rarely enforced getting a parking ticket feels unlucky and unfair. Why me question rick finally parking isbu maddening because u have no choice but to drive. The cart may be freedom but not being able to park it will turn into a cage figure out the source of thes. Irritation was just not enough parking. There isnt enough for a driver to find a spotof immediately in front of their destination. Want to statement parking to be free, convenient and available think of it as a vent diagram f hit two of those three is parking when it shopped a hot restaurant it 8 00 p. M. And all the spots are taken convenient and available but not free thats parking in frontnt of a t restaurant downtown that has parking meters. Free and available but not convenient as part many of us find a parking because we dont want to pay for it. Myself included. Inar other words standards for parking are very, very high. We do not want to pay, we do not want to wait and we dont want to walk. The best of parking is doled out along the status hierarchy. At uc barkley for example to win a reserved parking place he must win a nobel prize. [laughter] i dos not know what is required here at the library. It would be unimaginable for us to hold any other good to the standard. But the problem is certainly not that we dont have enough parking. In fact thereng is an astounding amount of parking in this country. As many as eight spots for every car. And of course not p all the cars are parked at the same time. Even if summit set out to write a book about how much space for parking there is in thisbi couny i was shocked by these numbers. So i will digress momentarily for the difficulty of finding a parking space and give you a sense of just how much parking there is. In the losan angeles county thee are 19 million Parking Spaces that is five for every household it is 14 of the Incorporated Land in the county produce more land than the moving plants on the streets and freeways put together. And Silicon Valley the wealthiest region of the niceties parking is 13 of the i land. Li there are 15 million spots in the bay area enough to wrap a parking lane around the earth twice. Smallest t city the more parking there is generally speaking. Seattle has five spo per household des moines, iowa has 20 per household. Parking parcels in other words in a a louisville twin 9 in denton kansas city. Curb parking you see atlanta and philadelphia here also plenty of parking. In buffalo new york the master plan is to demolish all downtown really halfway there. Standing in the way of parking progress. And it is not just buffalo. There is more land used for use restoringeach car in this cn there is for housing each person. A team of programmers were working on the first new game and a decade they studied american municipal architecture, politics and urban design to try to produce a compelling. Lead designer use a google earth to measure hise surroundings. The Biggest Surprise he found was the size of the parking lots. S when i started measuring out our local Grocery Store which i dont think of his being that big i was a blown away by how much more space for parking lot rather than actual store he said. A problem we of were originally going to model cities, real cities but we quickly realize there were way too many parking lots in the real world and our game was boring if iteally was proportional in terms of parking lots. In the game he said try to measure parking was, undergrou. We had to do the best we could and still make the game look attractive. So if there is so much parking then why is it so hard to find a spot . The answer lies in this question of ownership. Parking problem is as old as the road itself. In the seventh century bc the king hosted signs that read royal road let no man decrease it. Under penalty of death and public impalement. You can stop complaining about your parking tickets. Julius caesar introduced offstreet chariot parking in rome to reduce traffic, 17th century new york established a towing service to clear the streets of animals you can get your piggyback from the pound or your horseac for two and a half. In fact the terms of dog pound and toe pound both come from the shared history of unclaimed property. Up until the invention of the automobile the temperamental nature of horses with his own regulation. The adventth of the car was required to be left outside in all weather for days or weeks at a time turned the parking problem into a major dilemma. Not only did merchants and country folk quickly abandon horsepower in the first few decades of the 20th century commuters could drive themselvei itching the unwashed the pick pockets in the bustle pinchers on the trolleys american enthusiasm for this new mode of transport was overwhelming and immediate. The 1920s in muncie indiana one woman spoke for the nation she said she bought a car before installing indoor plumbing because you cannot go to town in the bathtub. [laughter] what followed were four decades of interminable traffic jams as cars swarm downtown streets observers believe the root of the traffic problem was parking. A large share of the traffic was caused by people looking for parking and another shirt was caused by people who gave up and double or triple parked. And so by the time the end of world war ii cleared the way for the renewal of the cities everyone was convinced that parking was a crisis in a postwar report on decentralization the flow of Business People and money to the suburbs the urban Land Institute the National Organization of Real Estate Developers concluded parking was in the most important single problem facing the Central Business districts of large cities today. When i first came across these accounts of the mid century city like this cartoon you see here which in case you cannot see the label says a Downtown Parking problem. I could barely believe it. Between the crises of racial inequality, endemic pollution, ramshackle housing, job loss and crime that characterize the urban trajectory after the Second World War newspaper editorials and conference keynote refocus on parking . Yes for General Motors video from the 1950s give yourself the green bite represents the conventional wisdom of the postwar era. Biltmore parking. What brings up store sales today is parking space when merchant says it is important to volume as a shelf space and display windows. Best investment a town can make, lots of them. The rise of the suburbs give this problem new urgency. Fix your parking thinking what or become obsolete should. They viewed it was a fight suburbs tapping urban vitality population in tax revenue was commonplace. At this point cities had two choices. They could try to manage parking demand by charging for parking, sprucing up Transit Service encouraging carpooling and building walkable places for jobs, homes and amenities close by. They had a new tool the parking meter invented in 1935 by Oklahoma City newspaper editor. He noticed all of the best parking spots were taken by employees they would arrive early in the morning and park all day. Then there is nothing during the day. Charge even a little bit for parking the allday parkers would park a fiveminute walk away giving the premium spaces the interface between the street and the building free for shoppers, clients, and delivery. Parking meters were hailed and there time as a miracle. But of course cities chose another path to focus on chart parking supply parking lots settlement of the wreckage of urban renewal publicly funded garages were put up downtown. Parking meter fell out of favor Transit Service began to disintegrate. Mixeduse mid Rise Development was redlined out of existence. Most importantly cities began requiring the renewed or renovated building having its own parking. Supplies. They began a long transfer of parking from public use on streets or municipal garages to a private one required of home and business. Capable of managing their streets and curbs cities force the private sector to take care of car parts. This decision would have serious consequences. Cities were about to come up with a very complicated and a willing answer to the question of who owns that parking space. Chronologically speaking we are now 1970. Curbs are made free or cleared for faster traffic. Their Critical Role as urban access is limited by either decision. For builders zoning for parking is ubiquitous. Can understand what planners werees thinking when they establish these rules. They could have the private sector fix the parking problem instead of city tax dollars funding taxexempt public garages teachers would be developed to do their parking themselves. Nearly every city adopted a long complex code that dictated how many parking spots for every single use in Apartment Buildings and schools nail salons number of nunnerys and Funeral Homes yes they really are that specific. You are looking at a popular parking manual on screen, tag your self i am a copy dont shop with a drive through window. They are so specific print look at these Marijuana Dispensary carpet store, Building Material and lumber supply judicial complex. Le here in cincinnati for example one spot for every tune of 50 square feet of a poolroom. One for every one of 50 square feet of a bingo parler. Five for every lane and a bowling alley. One for every two boats in a marina for it one for every two and 50 square feet of a quote sexually oriented business. [laughter] and no, i do not understand what needs its own parking regulation either. I do not think planus could cap imagine how effective these policies would be. Going to run through some of the consequences of this misguided approach to parking. The most dramatic consequence of asking the private sector to take care of car storages and lhousing. Anyone who was to build a small Apartment Building in the United States must first confront a multi variant financial geometry problem that begins with how might Parking Spaces can fit on the lot. The size quantity and shape of the housing falls from there. Sometimes. With just one parcel its hard tot make you think wk at all by the lot next door you can unlock economies of scale like a dry but was stalls on other side. Most smalltime developers couldt afford for even if they could find for adjacent properties for sale. Parking is the immovable object at the heart of neighborhood architecture. As a result of these rules we simply stop building small buildings. Parking requirements have have helped to trigger extinction level event with a bite sized Apartment Buildings like rowhouses, brownstones, tripledeckers that made up the American City in the early 20th century. The production was between two and four units filled by more than 90 between 1971 and 2021. More parking means less housing because parking takes up space and it cost money to build. Quite a lot of money in fact too. Building a stand alone garages barely profitable required parking tens of thousands of dollars the cost of every single american apartment or home including a half a billion dollar penalty annually on tenants who do not drive because they pay for that parking in their rent regardless of. Every completed building with a bunch of party included theres a blueprint for unbuilt structure that did not pencil out. This is a valley of the high parking requirement. On one side, on the right properties in expensive areas like downtown cincinnati and justify costly structures garages or even subterranean parking which can cost 100,000 a space. On the left to see low density urbanism with ample room to parker. You do not see much in between. The belly of the high parking requirement is not a fertile place. Limit zinc required parking and as a result we have a parking surplus and the housing shortage. The second consequence of making parking spot as mandatory as the front door has been in architecture. For centuries in american architecture has in tandem with parking lots increasing quantities of her lip parking has forced developers to move from the early 20th century that i just mentioned, corner taverns, storefront groceries, rowhouses bungalow courts et cetera. Big box stores houses of the primary architectural feature is the garage door. When ayo land advisor high enouh you get the parking podium building the most famous example might be marina city in chicago which you can see on the left but there are also plenty of examples here in downtown cincinnati. When land advisor not so high you get something more like Dodger Stadium in los angeles. This system has made it impossible to maintain the american main street. Central parcels on main street were originally developed as commercial storefronts facing the sidewalk with offices or housing above. Put 20 or 30 of them sidebyside and main street. That is what you see on the upper left here. If you wanted to open a shop on one of the slots and an American City to date you wouldo need to provide 1200 square feet of parking for every 1000 square feet of interior commercial space more than half of your lot is parking now. Ifo you want to build a twostoy shop two thirds of your lot has to be parking. If you want to build a threestory the footprint of your building shrinks to be barely more than a q quarter of your lot in a field of asphalt. This also makes it impossible to renovate historic structures. One architect described building in her town is locked up behind a parking padlock. They didki not have enough parkg to be given new life. The map is even worse for restaurants. In most cities tend Parking Spaces are required for a 1001stcl few suite of restaurant. Classic main street lot of 7500 square feet can only support a restaurant of 1500 square feet. 80 of your lot is parking now. The developer smith who works in los angeles told me about his trips to prevent new projects we showed them a picture in Community Beautiful zero lot line 1930s building with a cafe spent the next hour explaining why the requirements in the taco bell compact structures on huge lotsts is the american architecs form followsol function. Parking scholar said form followed parking requirements. Which brings me too a third consequence of the postwar transportation. It is a dish that only makes us hungry for more parking. Parking forces us to drive more the more we drive the more parking we crave it. In the early days certainly Parking Facilities arose in response to demand but later the hopes of the planet who decided to require parking every building they begin to create demand. Research has shown parking growth between 1960 and 1980 was a powerful predictor of car use in the following two decades. Moremo parking appeared to cause more traffic not as planners originally hoped back in the cars off the street. I spoke to guide chicago was the chief of staff. And he said if your number one concern is traffic but never when demand is parking you got to understand those things are cross purposes he said. There are two things you must discuss you dont to be there all night they would have a guess what they are . One is parking the others rats parking and rats. Other studies have confirmed the causeandeffect relationship between parking and driving at the level of homes offices or commercial districts. It is not hard to see why. Free parking is not just an incentive. It degrades the urban environment to the extent walking, biking, transit use become difficult or dangerous, it buildings repel each other like magnets of the same pole are hard to walk between. Parking minimums are like mutants inflating and expanding architecture and urbanism which bubbles asphalt. Fourth, after affordability, architecture, transportation, our parking decisions have also, needless to say had a terrible effect on the environment. For the Carbon Emissions from all the driving, local particulate pollution, storm water flooding during heavyvy rn because all the impervious surface has sealed over prairie, farmland and forest. A lack of groundwater replenishment for the same reason. Parking is a huge contributor to the urban heat effect and obviously hostile environment for birds and bugs. Present company excepted. So the mandatory private parking had awful consequences for housing and affordability, affo, architecture, transportation choices and the environment. But here is the crazy thing. All of that private parking did not even make it that easy to park. Reason parkinge has has such a determinative effect on her transportation is all of that parking is private. Its a vulcanized between homes, offices, jobs rarely is ever shared. That means clients must drive from one business to the next or risk getting towed. Means complimentary parking uses like itrt office in an Apartment Building or a bank and a restaurant for school in a theater, exist sidebyside one is empty with the other is full and then later at night and vice versa. A. Athis makes it less efficient which im sure you are all familiar with parking can be plentiful and accessible. The fact all this parking isnt shared help explain other simultaneously be so much parking and so little space to park. Water water everywhere and not a drop to t drink. Thisau is not just because it is shared also because the best parking is free free parking and popular destinations will become scarcer parking absorbed by residents and employees to park all day. Buddys estimate about one third of downtown traffic is made up of people looking for parking. And just one neighborhood drivers can put an extra 1 million miles on the road each year hunting for Parking Spaces. Garages, no its a first choice for expenses will Street Parking is free. That is backwards. Remember why we decided to mandate private parking with parking requirements . Because no one wanted to manage a public curve. And this separately has also had enormous effects on the daytoday experience of an american streets. One of the safest changes for pedestrian city officials could make the streets is to bump out curbs around intersections removinghe the parked cars adjacent to the crosswalk. This forces drivers to make slower and more precise and turns it proves their sightlines so they can see from far away if a child is about to cross the street. Most cities dous not do this because they do not want to touch free parking. Similarly cities can build lanes for bicycles, scooters, and other alternatives to the private automobile. Most cities dont do this because they do not to touch Street Parking. And so it thousands of people are killed each year riding their bikes. Zoom out a little bit more. Inar this situation is even more pernicious effect and is persuaded residents to seek change and growth in their communities whether in the form of new businesses, new neighbors. Its a loss of Parking Spaces. This t antisocial tendency is a natural result of prioritizing parking over people. If you view your fellow humans is coming into thousand pound uspackages you wont actually he a view of the city. Finally theres the question of public space by consigning so much of our most valuable land to one use and one use only the free storage of automobiles we have thoroughly close the prospects t of a rigid public le it can be hard to imagine what might have been. This is a part why tell you not to despair that sounds bad i know parking has wrecked our Architectural Heritage and environment, or transportation choices. Things are changing for the better. Surely after he started writing this book i read an article about a dangerous new respiratory virus going around wuhan china. [laughter] i would tell you what happens next for the month that followed i felt like i had wished on the monkeys paw. Do you know this for a man is granted threewo wishes that come true in the worst possible way. I chose this topic in part because i had experience of sudden revelation. All along the streets of our cities and a good many public plazas and parks as well we had consigned a vast amount of public space to the longterm storage. Some time ago in the murky past we had collectively cited the best use of this space was for cars to rest and recuperate before the next journey biggest cities like new york and los angeles real estate is incredibly expensive the twin ribbons ofha asphalt along each curb hold immense value. This is some of the most expensive land in the world. And you can have it for free provided you use it fore just e thing. I wish for others to share this epiphany to recognize the lltremendous potential of all te land delays hidden many 1000 parked cars and then the monkeys paw in the spring of 2020 City Planners and restaurants simultaneously came to the realization that all the parking than previously been considered essential to Small Business survival actually was innot necessary. Singers blossomed in parking lots and curb spaces nationwide for a moment you could begin to imagine what else we might do with all of this land. The street is too much a freeforall. Everything goes there are no rules all theer stubborn willpor with deck chairs and baseball bats forcing an unwritten code of conduct. The street is perceived as an open territory writing it for americans to stake their claims so contrary to what this pto shows this only applies if they arrive behind the wheel. The rest of parking wha has been required in every home, office,er funeral home, it is so rulebound to partition and regulated it is holding us back from better things. When i was living in chicago who is the founder of the parking cap spot hero. You might note this ablative book a parking spot in advance. The downtown loft or garage. When he started this company he thought theres not enough parking. Its not theres not enough parking in your he realized its theres too much that you dont know where it is. It is all reserved for this condo or that restaurant or this courthouse. Huge parking lots tend to be full once a week are particularly egregious examples of this. Feed the hungry, clothe the needy but dont show the parking . Smart developers have started to challenge the situation. Sharon parking between offices and homes and thereby lowering costs and rent for both smart cities have tried to do something similar. Instead of making each business built its own parking santa monica california hey into public garage system which allows them to park once and then walk on interrupted stretch. Cincinnati is trying to use its stock a Public Parking lots to build Affordable Housing for parks. Many towns in a few states have now realized it just not make sense to require parking of new homes or new businesses. So what happens when they stop requiring it . I set out to write this book just to American Cities had repealed the parking minimums. Hartford connecticut in buffalo new york. Over the past five years the reform is caught fire. Cincinnati for example in the an urbancore in 2018. So with all this parking really built only to comply with the law . Or was it simply the result of preference manifesting in environments that reflects our priorities. With a few experiments under our belts we can say these laws itdid force builders to construt more parking than they otherwise would have built. And seattle for example builders mostlyed did choose to build parking what they were freed from thesent requirements. No surprise it is america, everybody drives. 18000 fewer Parking Spaces than the old laws would have a car rd that the savings of half a billion dollars being in Los Angeles Downtown los angeles some of that beautiful old art deco architecture there. And los angeles builders are given the option to convert old Office Buildings like this turquoise eastern building you are looking at to convert to apartments and condos without including parking. They use it to create 7000 new Housing Units downtown and one decade. That was more than had been built in the previous three decades in downtown l. A. Combined. One third of those units would not have been built if parking had been constructed to the old standard. Many did own cars they packed them and garages that were mostly empty at night we had some friends by the way who lived in this blue building at turns out the just parked their car in the garage across the street, no big deal. Just a cities relaxed the rules about offStreet Parking the beginning to recognize on Street Parking could use a few more parking meters believe it or not are making a comeback San Francisco for example has repriced it streets with the goal of ensuring drivers can always find an open space. This has resulted in a more expensive Street Parking in certain locations. Cheaper Street Parking elsewhere and cheaper garages has less cruising for parking as parking spots open up more quickly at revenue from parking violations has gone down legal parking spots open up. Residents are spending much less time looking for it. Tooal often cities have forgottn the original purpose of the parking meter to manage and organize the precious zone that connects our streets and buildings they have and said youd parking regulations as a way to make a money and not even primarily by the way from meters but by the cycle of fines that ensue when theres not enough room for everyone to park. Both cities make more money from tickets then they differ up meters and that is backwards. Of course meters to bring in some money. They fund public improvements to give up transit passes, special zones for delivery trucks currently rack up tens of thousands of dollars in illegal parking fines per truck per year trying to do their job in places like boston or new york. Tens of thousands of dollars. Compare that to 275 you might pay for parking meter and suddenly free parking seems kind of expensive. Like urban riverfront in the 1990s the curb being reassessed as a place with lots of potential. Nobody likes paying for parking i get it. The cities are becoming more and more expensive you can drive right to the center of town leave your car there for free. If you give something away for free it will soon run out of it esdown that road lies the mistas many American Cities are trying to recover at the end of the day of free parking is not all that. Equitable after all. It leads to pollution, congestion, tickets, crab traffic crashes and a parking shortage that motivates the opposition to the housing and since new residents to the outskirts of the city. A free place to park is eight ay consolation prize from a city that doesnt want you to live there. This reassessment a parking ownership liberalizing the private lots and regulating the curb as an opportunity to improve our city and other ways too. What else might we do with the curb . We could create tiny park lists, patches of public space for older people, teenagers and young parents can sit and chat. We could build a bus lanes to stop transit riders been stuck in traffic or street cart writers we could build bike lanes because no one should die riding a bike. We can plant the trees and resort patches, prairie, bugs and birds clean and cool the air soak up stormwater before it fls peoples basements. This is no fantasy for the spring i wrote a story about paris the city that is taken up evils of the last three years flipped its parking policy upside down. It is stripped away tens of thousands of Parking Spaces and in their place put in place streets for schoolchildren outside hundreds of schools like what youre seeing here. Some of them include trees for shades, lanes for bicycles and buses benches for older people to rest on the morning walk. This freethinking is a necessity. We are in the midst of a once in a century change in parking policy spurred by the arrival of electric vehicles. Parking in the 21st centuries centurysgoing to assume all the functions of a gas station building out electric vehicle charging weather and a condo parking lot or on a big city curb it would be expensive it being crazy to install the infrastructure for every single carr in every sickle parking spot. But if we are going to share chargers we have to figure out how to share parking. With shared parking with the world of parking a little less divided between public and private and a lot better managed you would not need so much parking. You may say that is not sound very good to me it is true Many Americans have voted with their feet for house in the suburb three car garage but the promise of parking reforms not punishment for drivers. Or a Mass Movement towards households it is the freedom to leave the car behind once in a while. There is a surprising amount of promise here. The median American Household owns twopoint to cars. That is a lot of cars. More than half of all trips and inbig metro areas, cities and suburbs are under 3 miles. That is a distance that could be comfortably be covered on an electric bike or in a golf cart or on foot if we made the streets safe enough for people to full comfortable doing so. And if we were to take all of this parking and permit ourselves to do Something Else with it there it would be so many more things schools, cafes, gyms, so on, parks within walking distance. Then most expensive places to live in this country are time and time again the very places where driving is obstacle and parking is difficult its n university towns, 19th century h century neighborhoods in philadelphia or boston, wicker park in chicago Highland Park in l. A. In our obsessive drive to create more parking we have made it impossible to build more places like these even as they become the most desirable and exclusive neighborhoods in the country. Without parking baked Interest Rates and architecture how many more people could live in walkable places like these . How many more car dependent places freed from parking lots could grow into neighborhoods where people could ride bikes . Or a family with three cars could get by with two or family with two cars might manage with just one. In that worldea it would be easier, not harder to find a r spot and much easier to live n a place where you would not need to drive quite so often. Kids could walk to school and adults to the Grocery Store in aruba better parking there might be fewer places to park but in place of those old parking spots would emerge a city so much richer and fuller and fairer that we would not think twice about the we have lost. Thank you very much. [applause] raise your hand and ill come over with a microphone so people can hear question. I remember. [inaudible] that might happen in cities drop someone off at a location and theres more time on the road and less time in the car. [inaudible] could that be research and how that would affect parking . Its a greatki question. I feel like it was peak height for self drivingng cars i was vy interested in that idea. The founder of the lift wrote this long, long a post about how self driving cars and make it possible toro reimagine your environment because for example in downtownon cincinnati you wod no longer need any Parking Spaces because cars would drive income drop off their owners and drive to some low rent locked lt by the airport or something and sit there all day until time to come pick up you from your job. That is obviously an enticing vision we would have so much land to work with. I think that thing that has happened since is the promise of self driving cars has failed the reality has failed to live up to the promises over and over again think you lot most of the test load cross across the country 20185 youre slated for hearing hasnt done it yet. My sense is is not quite round the corner as we thought it was before. This book. [inaudible] output my special parts. [laughter] critics is sorted related to the previous question but may be a steppingstone is im curious what your thoughts thoughts are on car sharing. Maybe in your book or somewhere ive heard 90 or 95 of the cars life is spentnt part. So its a huge waste of the car. Whether companies have gone into that area. Seems like a bridge between the technology of self driving cars becoming more selfsufficient. Xes. Those showed a lot of promise those companies were offering car sharing for example in urban curb you can have a Public Parking spot reserved for them. You could take them out for couple hours and pay 10 or 15 bucks. It is easier andom cheaper than renting from hertz or avis or Something Like that speaking i f people who work in that industry their business wasnt donear and by the billions of dollars poured into uber and left. It got to the point you could rent a zipcar for four hours to outlet mall or Something Like that. It would cost you more and to get an uber driver to come and drive you both ways. And obviously that was not an actual comparison off the cost f each of those processes. There was so much money being poured into uber and left at thatat time they drove some of those cart sharing companies out of existence to reduce the clientele. One reason for optimism is car ownership has become extremelyve expensive. Evs are very pricey and the price of a new vehicle has gone up by Something Like 10 or 15 in the last few years. Car payments also soaring portion. I think all of that adds up to into reasons like car sharing might be possible again. But i think the companies that had a go at it 10 years ago were no longer in that environment that permitted them to do that kind of thing. So i am not sure. It and beyond that do you think of port towards Public Transportation that would be more beneficial to americans . [inaudible] no, what is that . Of movement awayar from publc transportation. I am not familiar with the expression. I think generally speaking i like the idea of make it possible for people to get around other ways. I think one of the big challenges here we talk obviously about how much parking as been a baked into the urban environment in a way thats made it really hard for people to get away from driving everywhere. There are some pretty easy changes we can make like getting rid of the laws require new parking that will begin to reverse that. Its not just about land use landuseits also about street. And if we do not make it safe for people to get around on the street they are not going to stop driving. Like today i was over in Mount Lookout visiting the childhood home of my grandmother who grew up ino cincinnati. They were so me things about the neighborhood that just feel theyve done a lot right. They got parking meters by this downtown commercial which prevents the people who work in the stores and restaurants are parking there all day and taking up the spots. But then you go on some the streets around their people are driving 55 miles in her and they have got bikes on the street your 2 feet away from somebody going by at that speed in a pickup truck. Nobodys going to want to take to their kids are Little League to a lie game on that street. I think getting rid of the parking y requirement is a low hanging fruit that make difficult decisions how to allocate space in thehe streets and politically thats pretty challenging. I joined. [inaudible] and i emailed he said you get permit parking that helps a lot. I found the city is prioritizing high density uses the parking to make the case finding parking for my son or my aging parents it also means we have as residents all of cincinnati. There is choosing cars over people by trying to advocate for residents who need parking who dont have the option to have offStreet Parking built into their property and also developers to justify not building parking at all specifically Affordable Housing developments where theyd be filled. In my district Affordable Housing opensje up type 56 units it was right to the street that has 11 parking spots and all those were filled by residents we are not looking at density of additional 35 this same amount. None of them are providing parking i think its great it sounds so beautiful its very idealistic. I am wondering if theres any reason you have found the downside of this . Developers doing great in a parking i can put 12 units without parking. Youll figure it out later these residents are now trying to figure it out we are getting so much pushback from people its kind of like the monsters you only think about your car when were thinking about her kids. Yes. We are going to have to make some tough choices. The choice in that case is do we want 56 units no parking or do we want i dont know 35 units and some Parking Spaces . I think that for too long we have taken the latter attacked and prioritized parking over units. This situation may not be as severe in cincinnati as it is in some cities like in new york city for example theres 60000 People Living literally on the street. And so it becomes very hard in those places to argue that we should build more parking instead of more homes. That said, understand obviously the neighborhood level does create this intractable conflict that inspires people to oppose any new housing at all. That is even worse obviously then winding upg of the smaller building that includes some Parking Spaces. Now its just to tell people well its going to get more difficult to park this is going to become a neighborhood where ownership is may be a little less, the big people with fewer cars in this neighborhood its going to change his characters thats one option that the idealistic option then the cynical optione is to give the current residents over ship over a limited number of parking placards that entitled them to like ownership over kirby spaces so anybody else that moves in the neighborhood after that can come with a credit if they want but there are options for parking are going to be limited based on the number of available spots. Now the status quo in a lot of cities is the issue residential parkingg permits just a number o correspond to the existing number of spaces on the street that creates a lot off conflic. If you were to tap it and say okay this belongs to you its a tradable asset than all the said you have an incentive for more people to move into the neighborhood because you have something thats going to become more valuable which is a license apart on the street. [inaudible] i can talk loud. I would like to provide something. We moved laster after 46 years we left the building. We now come to the library on the south bank. Its right outside our building and off we go. That is something very few peoplele use. [inaudible] [laughter] [applause] [inaudible] which it feels to s me thats a driving problem. I love kids and their young 20s are saying i dont want a car all have a car would have kids of my own. Are you seeing a change in terms of people driving . I am skeptical. Jens e are going to be car drivers there so many generational difference there. I dont think the american urban environment as a result of actual preferences. Its hard to see how the environment we thought is the environment we wanted there so much law and subsidy im encouraging us to create more low density sprawling places. Home mortgage Interest Deduction on and on and on. So i think one of things that shows as a preference the more urban living is the price of living is so high. That has persuade a lot of people. I doubt this is the case there are lots of ways you can try to dissuade people from driving. You can put a higher tax on gasoline for example. You could put in tolls on bridges or Something Like that. But the often easiest way is to charge for parking. We just know this is how it works iff we make people pay for parking they will reassess their transportation and mobility decisions. I sort of agree the problem is as much driving as parking but parking happens to be the lever we have controlling driving its very accessible and its pretty flexible. If you put in a bunch of parking meters in a downtown Commercial Area will people stop coming there and know its parking on the street. Just lower the price you screwed up thatst. Okay you can change it. That is not true if they beat shutting down the highway or Something Like that. Thats one of things appealing about the parking reform movement. Thats what they did in sance francisco they raise the price here, lowered the price here, see how they react too. Theres a lot of opportunity there to shape the way people drive. [inaudible] this is prioritizing urban planning department. Very successful in gentrifying this whole area. That seems like a conflict of interest we should be getting rid of it seems like a conflict of interest because if you think we ought to be they are going to mconstruct a more parking garas and encourage people to drive because they make money from it. Actually i think in a lot of cities the status quo is permanent conflict of interest because of something i mentioned during my speech is cities make a lot of money from illegal parkingf citations. Almost all of that make more money from illegal parking citations than they do for meters. This is a big come component of the revenue driven policing there which basically parking tickets trap peoples and cycles of debt and find it creates a terrible situation. I basically agree with you that it is bad for cities to think about parking as a cash cow. They should think about it as a way to organize street space. If people are willing to pay that much to parking garages that i think its basically okay thats probably where they should be parking if that money goes back into City Services and creates neighborhoods people want to invest in and spend time in to meet that is a pretty good source of revenue for that. You guys talk about Public Transportation as an alternate. People should not be driving all that much. One of the ideas of redeveloping a Downtown Parking space with people will stay closer to home. And if they have to leave theyll take Public Transportation but its not an urban environment they have all their needs met within that urban environment. Then they dont really need a car. Quick service at Public Transportation is a big part of the solution. Especially people going to be going completely car free and going to depend on it. And again like a lot of the problems with creating an efficient and workable Public Transportation network comes from the fact parking is free and theres very little incentive to pay money to use transit. It also takesev up so much space it prevents us from example of bus transit would allow transit to get where the going more quickly. I think the reason i dont dwell on it so much is i think the real low hanging fruit here is about the neighborhood trips those arches people make in cars now but they dont need to make in cars in the future. It goes without saying a more efficient and robust Public Transit network will help people get there and reduce car ownership from twopoint to cars to household to i dont know 1. 7 . Even that would be a seismic change in the american urban environment, and our economy and the restore our carsbu and all that stuff. But to me the easy step is this neighborhood short trips. That is someplace where Public Transit should be rolled out since the pandemic we have seen a reassessment about how people zethink about public transport r decades as organist getting people downtown. Because Downtown Business interested not want to be stopped at by traffic they supported new initiatives new investments and so on. I think Public Transit agencies are recognizing if they are going to survive in error or fewer people come downtown they are going to need to focus less on serving downtown offices and more on helping people live car free lives. I think some of them are coming to that i realization i hope tht it figured out for the all go bankrupt. [applause] cspanshop. Org is cspans online store collection of cspan products, apparel, books, and a court. Theres something for every cspan fan or any time at cspanshop. Org. Part of the new series we are asking you what books do you think shapes america . What found the theory by william faulkner. [inaudible] pretty quick to kill a mockingbird. You can join in the conversation by submitting your Favorite Book you think help shape this country go to our book site cspan. Org books that shaped america. Select record video in 30 seconds or less tl us your pick and live every monday at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Weekends on cspan2 our intellectual feast. 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