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Reports: Parking

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Parking: Basic Considerations
$2.99

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

Across the Transect from wilderness to metropolis, there are increasingly intense and precise relationships among the elements of urbanism. Not least are those that are affected by parking. The relationships are not merely technical, but also include the prevalent social sense of how much of the urban backstage is suitable for show. Any factor can skew the others; nonetheless, some effective generalizations can be established. Although both the demand and supply of parking must be flexible, the bulk, movement, and storage pattern of cars are spatially implacable.

Alley and garage variations
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New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

Every component of urbanism possesses both technical and social dimensions. While there are always good reasons for a traditional component or relationship of components to assume a standard form, there are also times when some widespread alteration of social circumstance licenses, indeed demands, technical reinvention.

The recovery of urbanism
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New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

Alley-loaded and on-street parking can easily make new urbanist neighborhoods more than competitive with sprawl in lower-density situations.  In denser center and core zones, though, the parking issue truly comes to the fore. By its basic nature, parking forces uses apart, disrupting the adjacencies that make for effective and efficient urbanism. New Urbanism must provide parking, but not at the cost of coherence.

The recovery of urbanism
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New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

What is the difference between New Urbanism and traditional, “old” urbanism? The answer has to do with one big systemic thing — the rise of suburbia — and with one ubiquitous technical thing — the response to suburbia’s technological icon and instrument, the automobile.

Pave paradise? No, ditch the parking lot
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New Urban News Article, 4/1/2005
Planning expert Donald Shoup offers a novel solution to places damaged by too much parking.
For years urbanists have tried a wide assortment of tactics to reduce the damage that parking inflicts on communities. Now comes UCLA urban planning professor Donald C. Shoup with a radical, yet carefully argued prescription: Governments should stop requiring off-street parking. In The High Cost of Free Parking, Shoup systematically attacks ingrained ideas that have prevented urbanists from asking the most basic question of all: Why should governments require parking other than on the streets?

The plaza: Parking/plaza techniques
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New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

There is a strong reflex for a designer simply to attach the label “parking lot” to an area and then to get on with the design of the building. In fact the necessary function of parking can be a resource for the creation of public space. Overcoming the simplistic conception of “a place for cars” is the critical first step towards techniques that emphasize the creation of a pedestrian-oriented space.

Parking: Introduction
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New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

The New Urbanism differs in several ways from the traditional settlement models from which it springs. No other single factor is as important in forcing variations from traditional practice as the necessity to deal with cars in quantity; and no aspect of that affects the urban fabric as much as parking. Parking must be be handled with both firmness and imagination if the virtues of traditional urbanism are not to be altogether scoured away by it.

Parking
$5.99

Chapter 25 of the New Urbanism Best Practices Guide

Abstract: From the moment private automobiles first appeared on city streets, parking has posed a major design problem for the public realm. In this chapter, Brian O’Looney, Neal Payton, and Patrick Siegman offer an in-depth examination of parking solutions — for settings ranging from natural areas to neighborhoods of single-family detached houses, to moderate-density areas, to city centers and urban cores.

Parking: Details for the Garage
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New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

Once the garage placement on the lot has been settled, and the spaces immediately around the garage have been studied for their social and technical performance, it remains to design the garage itself. Two aspects are discussed here. Some are essentially prosthetic or mitigating design strategies that help compensate for defects of placement. Others are good and useful whether or not the garage is optimally located and oriented.

Parking: The Garage
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New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

Judged by numbers and ubiquity, the garage is the most successful new building type of the twentieth century. Houses prior to the rise of the automobile often trailed a variety of sheds behind them, but seldom did any of them have the size and functional complexity characteristic of the contemporary garage.

The Live-Work Unit: Some general code problems and solutions
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New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

In the following discussion of characteristic code issues with live-work units, three assumptions are made. The first is that the work component occurs on the ground floor only, directly accessible from a public face of the building. The second is that the dwelling either actively shares the work space, or alternatively is located separately above or behind it. And third, it is assumed the work activity occurs in a building that is primarily a dwelling and is set on its own lot. Other arrangements fall into other type categories, requiring their own practices.