People complain about parking a lot. The suburbanite complains that there is not enough parking when there is not an open parking space within 10 feet of the strip mall merchant they want to do business with. The urban champion rants that motor vehicles are the spawn of Satan and that asphalt gardens littering metro Phoenix only encourage the car obsession. Both groups can raise a fair amount of sympathy in their own camp.
However, it is not the cars or the parking lots that are the real problem. The real problem is that city planners in the SouthWest have forgotten how to build community. They have lost the art of creating city/neighborhood cores that provide multi-stop destinations to those that visit or live in them. Drive by any large mall and you will find people not complaining about parking. Why? Because they stay there for 2 to 6 hours. Walking for 5 minutes when you stay for that long is no big deal. It’s time we recreate city/neighborhood cores that allow for someone to park and spend a reasonable amount of time exploring, shopping, playing and dining.
It’s time we provided enough value that parking and having to walk a few blocks is not an issue. If we start there it will only be a matter of time before people choose to regularly inhabit these cores. When that happens dependence on the car will wane. We must stop fighting the symptom (car dependence) and start attacking the cause (poor urban planning). We must embrace the city we are in if we wish to obtain the city we want to become. We live in a car dominated culture, asking people to people to quit the car cold turkey is unrealistic. Giving them options to use the car less is reasonable.
How can you affect planning in your city to reduce car dominance and restore community?
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