Comments on: Donald Shoup: Planners Are Versed in Parking Politics, Not Policy

By: Spud Spudly

Spud Spudly — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:14:43 +0000

Park Slope streets will indeed be dirtier. I also wonder whether people there realize that there's still a law against parking in one spot for more than seven days continuously. (Not that it's ever really enforced unless someone complains.)

By: Joe Blow

Joe Blow — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:31:10 +0000

What nonsense. People graduating from planning schools in 2008 most certainly discuss parking and are even assigned Shoup's literature as readings. "Planning departments" aren't discrete entities that make choices as autonomous units. They are composed of individuals, most of whom have to please a huge array of constituents, and are like all bureaucratic organizations, directed by the late-career managers who went to school a long time ago, when nobody was discussing the idea of too much parking (including Shoup). There are a ton of idealist greenhorn urban planners who want to rid people of their cars. But they're the "assistant planning technicians" not the people in charge. Shoup should know this. Working in Delaware, somebody once commented to me that the state's Department of Transportation was "a couple retirements away from being pedestrian-friendly."

By: JF

JF — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:55:28 +0000

That NY Times article bugged the shit out of me. "It is a routine so ingrained in the New Yorker’s life that it seems to have always existed." THE New Yorker, huh? So I don't count as "the New Yorker" because I'm one of the 80% of residents who don't own a car? The 60% of households in Park Slope that don't own a car don't count? What are we going to see next? "The New Yorker dreads being mobbed by paparazzi while walking from their limousine to the helicopter to the Hamptons"? Michael Wilson, get off your ass and ask some real Park Slopers what they think about having dirtier streets all summer.

By: Larry Littlefield

Larry Littlefield — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:01:30 +0000

Looks like Park Slope will be a great place for those from other neighborhoods to store their car for free when they travel out of town by air this summer. We'll see how much of a paradise it is if people catch on.

Having gone to graduate school in city planning (84-85), I wouldn't agree that parking is never discussed. But it is (was) discussed in terms of meeting the demand, not restricting it.

I don't want to go over old ground, but the required parking doesn't have the teeth people think it does in NYC, except in very low density areas. Parking is pushed by market demand, not regulations.

The question is whether the city might want to put some teeth in the maximums, which are pretty weak outside the CBD.

The good news -- there is no enforcement in NYC to ensure "accessory" parking spaces are in fact limited to residents. There is nothing to prevent the developer of a building to lease the entire parking facility to Zipcar, for the use of the entire neighborhood.