Archinect - News

Austin becomes largest city in the U.S. to dump parking requirements

2023-11-05T09:00:00-05:00

Austin on Thursday became the largest city in the country to stop requiring new developments to have a set amount of parking — a move aimed at both fighting climate change and spurring more housing construction amid the city’s affordability crisis. The Austin City Council voted 8-2 Thursday to wipe out minimum parking requirements for virtually every kind of property citywide. That includes single-family homes, apartment buildings, offices and shopping malls.

As noted by The Texas Tribune, housing advocates, developers, and climate activists have increasingly advocated for the erasure of parking requirements, which have been found to drive up housing costs and fuels a dependency on cars. Cities across the country in recent years, including Portland, Minneapolis, and San Jose, have taken similar actions to scale back requirements. In 2019, the L.A. City Planning Department released its Downtown Community Plan, called DTLA 2040, which included plans to eliminate parking requirements for all of downtown Los Angeles.

Previously on Archinect: Are vacant parking lots affecting the cost of housing? A new study in Boston sheds light on the issue

According to Austin City Council Member and the proposal’s author, Zohaib Qadri, keeping parking requirements contradicted the billions of dollars the city has set out to invest in its public transit system.

Opponents of the move worry that getting rid of parking requirements will redirect parking to near...

Third wave Open Streets: Open for whom?

2021-07-02T09:00:00-04:00

According to New York Times restaurant critic, Pete Wells, who “loves outdoor dining,” the Big Apple is in the process of another makeover with a “third wave” of Open Restaurants being added to the city’s already bustling streets.

Nevertheless, as more parking spaces are given over to myriad semi-permanent structures, how this program is enacted will determine who is able to enjoy the public realm. Are restaurant-going people the only New Yorkers that should stand to benefit from this significant shift in urban design?

Open Restaurants and Open Streets were conceived in 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, in which indoor dining was prohibited, allowing restaurants to move their tables outside. The latter was designed to provide additional public space for New Yorkers to socially distance outdoors. Restaurant-going locals have enjoyed the redesign of city streets—however provisional the structures—and now, through regulation, the city has the opportunity to make this a...

New Yorkers are monetizing their unused parking stalls

2020-03-13T14:50:00-04:00

Car owners know that circling the block for a spot and moving the car for alternate side parking is just a part of life, unless they’re willing to pay for a parking space. But for some New Yorkers, an unused space in a parking garage or an extra spot in the driveway is a valuable piece of real estate and an easy way to earn extra income.

Parking is big business in New York City, and not just in new Manhattan developments. The New York Times takes a deeper look at the New Yorkers who are making significant sums renting out their unused parking stalls across the city, even as driving becomes more difficult in certain parts of the city.

New IKEA store in Vienna omits parking and celebrates nature

2020-01-21T15:47:00-05:00

The querkraft-designed store seeks to create a friendly, open, unconventional, and informal experience for users. The new building will be situated in an urban setting, and with no allotted parking, customers are expected to arrive by means of public transportation. The structure will be constructed with prefabricated vertical concrete columns on a 10 x 10 meter grid, which the architects intended to promote flexibility for the company, the grid creates spaces that can shifted and repurposed through time. It is due for completion in 2021.

The latest trend in luxury real estate? Bespoke automated parking

2019-09-23T12:59:00-04:00

“[Parking is] sort of becoming an expected amenity for a high-end condo,” said Andrew Bradfield, a principal of Orange Management, a developer that has installed automated garages in two Brooklyn condos: Waverly Brooklyn in Clinton Hill and the Symon in Downtown Brooklyn. “To not have parking hampers marketing.”

Despite having one of the best public transportation systems in the world, New York City's developers have taken to embracing bespoke and automated parking options as luxury building amenities in recent years. The spots can cost upwards of $200,000 per stall to rent, depending on the development.

The New York Times reports that Renzo Piano Building Workshop's 565 Broome SoHo, BIG's XI residences, and Robert A.M. Stern's 70 Vestry are among many recent Manhattan condo projects that offer "hefty amounts of accessory parking."

Visualizing L.A. County's bad urban planning decisions

2019-08-27T19:00:00-04:00

Like most American cities, Los Angeles has too much parking. Way too much parking.

In a recent online essay titled No Parking Here, designer and illustrator Josh Vredevoogd takes a researched look into the failed urban planning ethos that underpins Los Angeles County's massive sea of parking stalls.

According to Vredevoogd's research, Los Angeles County is currently home to 18.6 million parking spaces, a number that eclipses the county's population (10.2 million residents). If collected into a single parcel, the gargantuan parking lot would span 110,000 acres of asphalt, or, an area roughly 7.5 times the size of Manhattan. If populated at Manhattan's density, Vredevoogd agrues, that sizable lot could host a population of 12 million residents.

The illustrative example highlights a central issue for Los Angeles's urbanism: the area's parking minimums fuel many of the region's deeply entrenched social problems, including the housing affordability crisis, the homelessness crisis, and...

Are vacant parking lots affecting the cost of housing? A new study in Boston sheds light on the issue

2019-08-06T20:59:00-04:00

A widespread over-supply of parking in metro Boston residential developments is driving up the cost of housing and may encourage people to own cars who otherwise would not, according to a new study by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.

What’s the true cost of parking?

In 2014, Sarah Goodyear wrote a piece for CityLab titled "How Parking Spaces are Eating Our Cities Alive" that provides a framework for answering the question. In her article, Goodyear discusses how the average parking space takes up about 300 square feet, or “the size of a studio apartment in New York,” according to the article. That wasted space is compounded across the average city, Goodyear argues, creating vast areas that are not only heavily dependent on cars, but that also contain lots of empty parking spaces much of the time.

This begs the question: exactly how many 300-square-foot parking spaces are being left vacant? It's alarming to reflect on the amount of unused real estate that’s being taken up by parking, especially when we consider how these spaces happen to correspond in size to a much-needed housing type. If these unused parking spots were converted to apartments, would the cost of housing fall?

In Boston, a study by the Metropoli...

Parking Madness 2019: Which urban transformation will take home the trophy?

2019-03-25T18:19:00-04:00

This year’s parking crater tournament has us feeling something past contests never did: Hopeful. We asked readers for the best examples of surface parking lots turned dynamic urban places around the country. We got a great response, with some really exciting transformations. We had to eliminate a few contestants to whittle it down to the Sweet 16.

If you've enjoyed the America’s Sorriest Bus Stop contest, organized annually by Streetsblog, and are looking for an alternative 'Madness'-themed tournament this March, then this is for you: Parking Madness 2019 kicked off just a few days ago and pits 16 successful surface parking lot transformations in the U.S. and Canada against each other.

Image via Streetsblog USA

Fill in your brackets now with these hopeful contenders:

Kansas City
Minneapolis
Oakland
Atlanta
Houston
Boston
Pittsburgh
Portland
Providence
Austin
D.C. Pike
D.C. NoMa
Indianapolis
Toronto
Albuquerque
Tampa

Minneapolis' Downtown East development already crushed the Kansas City Power & Light District transformation in the first round, and Oakland's MacArthur BART Station is in the ring against Atlanta's Candler Park MARTA Station right now.

Which city is your bet to take home the coveted 'Most Improved Crater' award?

What if parking garages could have a second life? Design firms like UltraBarrio and Gensler bet on it

2019-01-19T11:50:00-05:00

Even today, parking garages are typically underused. In the not-too-distant future, car shares, self-driving cars, increased investment in transit, or simple behavioral change could all shift the amount of parking people think they need. And the U.S. also has far more parking than necessary–in Seattle, for example, there are five parking spaces for every resident. Architects and city planners are increasingly realizing that valuable city space could be put to better use than storing cars.

Parking garages run rampant, especially in Los Angeles. According to Gensler's co-CEO Andy Cohen there are 500 million parking spaces in the United States. “Think about all that real estate, all that attention to parking, that could be revitalized and reused for the future of our cities.” Today parking garages house a vast amount of underutilized space. Over time, the need for parking garages will dwindle and parking spaces will have to find an alternative purpose. Architects and urban planners are working through ways in which these gigantic structures can be turned into useful alternatives to developing housing, office space, and other spaces of function.

The Mod © Gensler

84.51° headquarters in Cincinnati Image © Gensler

Gensler is already in the works of transforming a part of Netflix's two-floor parking garage into new office space However, this isn't Gensler's first garage transformation. In Cincinnati, the architecture firm transformed 84.51's headquarters by converting 3 floo...

The world is filled with perplexing designs, parking garages are one of them

2019-01-10T19:11:00-05:00

The infamous parking garage. These monumentally sized structures have plagued city infrastructures across the globe. As the automobile still remains the most popular choice of transportation, it's no question we have so many parking garages. Often described as monolithic and bulky many architects and developers, depending on the project, see the parking garage an unfortunate expense. However, despite the many qualms people have about these massive structures, not all parking garage's are alike.

Below are 12 of the most intriguingly designed parking structures found all over the globe. Scroll down to view each car park and their descriptions below. *Structures are listed in no particular order.

Charles Street Car Park Image © Alamy

#12 Charles Street Car Park
Location: Manchester, UK
Designed by: Allies and Morrison
Description: "The structure consists of precast concrete columns, walls and floors. The external envelope is finished in natural anodized aluminum panels, painted green on...

New report presents staggering amount of parking in US cities

2018-07-16T15:13:00-04:00

Groundbreaking research presents credible estimates of the total parking supply in several American cities, and it's not pretty. Parking spaces are everywhere, but for some reason the perception persists that there’s “not enough parking.” And so cities require parking in new buildings and lavishly subsidize parking garages, without ever measuring how much parking exists or how much it’s used.

A new report from Eric Scharnhorst at the Research Institute for Housing America, an arm of the Mortgage Bankers Association, estimates the total parking supply in five US cities. Looking at satellite imagery and tax record data, Scharnhorst tallied on-street parking, surface parking, and garage parking in New York, Seattle, Philadelphia, Des Moines, and Jackson, Wyoming. The results show staggeringly high amounts of land use dedicated to parking with low use percentages.

Would you pay $760,000 for parking? World's most expensive spot sells for just that!

2018-06-22T14:33:00-04:00

Hong Kong is the world's most expensive real estate market, which helps explain why the world's most expensive parking spot just sold there for the equivalent of $760,000 USD. And no, despite the enormous price tag, the parking spot doesn't come with an apartment included, or anything particularly special for that matter.

The single parking space originally was bought for $430,000 USD in September 2017 and was handsomely resold for almost double that earlier this month. The lot is located on the first floor of a luxury residential development in the Kowloon district of Hong Kong, where apartments cost millions and millions. With only 370 spaces, in a complex of 527 units, this has led to a bidding war amongst its ultra-wealthy residents.

"The development is in a luxury residential area. The residents have a lot of cash and simply do not care about a few million dollars when a flat there costs about $12.7 million (HK$100 million)," Sandia Lau, a director at Centaline Property Agenc...

Is City Transformer's new folding car the answer to our parking problems?

2017-11-15T15:22:00-05:00

Urban drivers spend an average of 20 minutes per trip looking for parking and studies have found that anywhere from about 30 to 60 percent of the cars you see driving around a downtown core are doing just that. The energy spent looking for parking burns 47,000 gallons of gas and generates 730 tons of carbon dioxide a year and in dense cities like New York City, can account for up to 40% of energy consumed by automobiles.

Urbanists have long seen the emergence of self-driving cars as the solution to problems posed by parking as well as other urban ills; as fleets of robocars replace the need for individual car ownership, the amount of parking needed will decline accordingly freeing up large swaths of space for other uses while reducing energy consumption.

Adding to this vision for new urban transportation, the Israeli company City Transformer has designed a self-driving car with an added bonus: it folds itself, shrinking at the push of a button to fit into a motorcycle parking spa...

America is building more for cars than people

2017-09-18T19:10:00-04:00

It’s hard to escape the irony that the U.S., which will need something like 43 million new housing units to keep up with population growth in the next 35 years, is using space to build apartment-size garages, even as trends in ride-sharing and self-driving cars cast a measure of uncertainty on American car culture.

Despite housing shortages and rent increases, 24% of the new homes completed in 2015 in the US included a garage for 3 or more vehicles. Since 1992, when the census started tracking this, more 3-car garages than 1-bedroom apartments have been built. With the ever-increasing need for housing, and uncertain future of car ownership, these large garages could be transformed into living or working spaces.

Car-less apartment renters pay 16% of their rent for parking that they don't use

2017-07-18T18:43:00-04:00

The average price of building a garage parking space (as much as $34,000 in 2012) is passed on to people whether they own a car or not, and distort the true demand for urban parking.

According to the 2011 National American Housing Survey data of the US census, about 16% of a housing unit’s monthly rental cost is attributable to the expense of building an urban parking spot. For the average renter that amounts to to $1,700 per year, or $142 per month.

Parking mandates increase housing prices by displacing area that could have gone to housing (thus shrinking supply), and makes each new unit more expensive to pay for more garage parking. A separate study in Los Angeles found the city’s parking minimums raised apartment prices by about $200 per month and price of a condo by about $43,000. Renters without cars end up subsidizing this arrangement to the tune of about $440 million annually in the US. While only 7% of US rental households lack cars, according to Census data, this burden falls most heavily on the urban poor since lower-income households can least afford to subsidize garage parking spaces.

Researchers find that it might be less wasteful to price and sell ...

Developing flexible parking garages for a rideshare-dependent LA

2017-04-18T13:37:00-04:00

The strategy reflects a consensus among some developers and planners that California’s vaunted car culture is inevitably going to run out of gas...[Andy] Cohen, co-chief executive of Gensler, predicts car ownership will peak around 2020 and then start to decline, with more Americans relying on some form of ride-sharing than their own vehicles by 2025. That means cars gradually would disappear from home garages, curbs and parking structures, freeing up acre upon acre of real estate for new uses.

Some developers are already planning for a not-so-far-off future Los Angeles where more people primarily rely on ridesharing (including from autonomous vehicles) than driving their own car, particularly in the form of parking garages that can be redesigned for other uses like commercial spaces or live/work units.

“...despite what some believe is the inevitability of a transportation revolution, many builders are reluctant to pay for flexibility until changes in driving habits are more pronounced, said Los Angeles real estate attorney Justin Thompson of Nixon Peabody. A lot of developers may think, ‘Well, that’s going to be on the back burner for a while,’ Thompson said, ‘but the progressive developers are going to factor this in.’”

Kirksey Architecture selected to retrofit Houston's Astrodome

2016-12-23T13:14:00-05:00

Harris County commissioners have chosen Houston-based Kirksey Architecture to design a project to retrofit the Astrodome by raising its floor and installing parking spaces underneath. The $105 million project -- unveiled by county officials in September -- is the most recent attempt to secure the building's future. [...] Many feared then that the world's first multi-purpose domed stadium for sporting events would face the wrecking ball.

Houston "Eighth Wonder of the World" previously in the Archinect news:

From housing cars to housing people: the case for designing adaptable parking garages

2016-11-09T15:57:00-05:00

LMN Architects [...] wants the tower to survive 50 to 100 years. “If that’s the case, we do need to make sure—I feel we do have have the responsibility—that if the parking uses do change, we design to be able to adapt to that change,” [...] the coming transformation to a car-free-ish future. With rideshare, bikeshare, carshare, increasing transit options, and fully automated vehicles on the horizon, cities are less eager to allocate precious space for empty, parked cars.

LMN Architects' proposed Seattle tower — potentially the tallest on the West Coast — previously in the Archinect news:

Cars in the Sky: Thom Faulders of Faulders Studio talks Miami's slick parking garages and globalized design on Archinect Sessions #87

2016-11-03T14:35:00-04:00

Joining Miami's proud tradition of statement-parking projects by the likes of Herzog & de Meuron and Gehry Partners, Faulders Studio has a new garage-facade design set for Miami's formerly industrial Wynwood Arts District. Faulders joined us on the podcast to talk about the potentials of parking structures for local urbanism, the role of street art in the neighborhood, and how Miami is becoming a must-build place for globalized design.

One of the many uses of Herzog & de Meuron's parking garage, 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami ↑

Check out images of Faulders Studio's parking garage below (courtesy of Faulders Studio).

Listen to episode 87 of Archinect Sessions, "Cars in the Sky":

iTunes: Click here to listen, and click the "Subscribe" button below the logo to automatically download new episodes.
Apple Podcast App (iOS): click here to subscribe
SoundCloud: click here to follow Archinect
RSS: subscribe with any of your favorite podcasting apps via our RSS feed: http://archinect.libsyn.com/rss
Downl...

Floridians may not see eye-to-eye politically, but they all agree parking garages are awesome

2016-11-01T15:02:00-04:00

Paraphrased by the Washington Post, architect Terence Riley puts Miami's parking garages at the literal forefront of local urbanism: "In a city where everyone drives, the parking garage is the foyer." After all, Riley's firm, K/R Architects, curated the design of one of the city's most flamboyant parkades: Museum Garage, in the Miami Design District, features six different firms responsible for different facades: WORKac's and J. Mayer H.'s are pictured below (the former's design is on the left, mostly in white, bending into the latter's on the right, where things get more colorful) along with Clavel Arquitectos, Nciolas Buffe, K/R Architects, and Sagmeister & Walsh.

Museum Garage is in good company. Miami has a ton of architecturally bold parking garages—1111 Lincoln Road by Herzog & de Meuron (the cover image here) cost $65 million to build and is home to a designer shop and a private penthouse for its developer. The New York Times called it "a piece of carchitecture that resembles ...

Pave paradise? American cities are rethinking parking spaces

2016-10-03T18:28:00-04:00

The US has long been the world leader in building parking spaces. During the mid 20th century, city zoning codes began to include requirements and quotas for most developments to include parking spaces. The supply skyrocketed. A 2011 study by the University of California, estimated there are upwards of 800m parking spaces in the US, covering about 25,000 square miles of land.

Increasingly, cities are rethinking this approach. As cities across the world begin to prioritise walkable urban development and the type of city living that does not require a car for every trip, city officials are beginning to move away from blanket policies of providing abundant parking.

For more on pedestrian-friendly initiatives, follow these links:

Atlanta struggles to trade parking lots for density

2016-06-02T14:12:00-04:00

"If you design for everyone to drive, then what will you get? Congestion." [...] “We really need to shift now, from a situation like this, where you have a heavy parking load associated with an apartment building in a very urban setting, to way less parking,” [...] "You really have to start with the density and less parking. If you don't, then you've lost your opportunity, because once you've built that infrastructure, it's so difficult to undo that."

More on the parking problem and pedestrian infrastructure:

Los Angeles County has 3.3 parking spots for every car, taking up 14 percent of its land

2015-12-02T13:33:00-05:00

Many urban planners think abundant parking goes hand in hand with LA's perpetual traffic woes, pollution, and lack of density. The perception that there will always be available parking leads drivers to neglect public transportation options, contributing to traffic, as well as to the increase in pollution caused by circling the block in search of a spot. Additionally, zoning codes obligate real estate developers to build a certain number of spaces with every project

More on the problematics of plentiful parking:

California to decrease parking requirements for affordable housing

2015-10-14T13:10:00-04:00

Late in the day on Friday [Governor Jerry Brown] signed Assembly Bill 744, which allows affordable housing developers to build less parking than many local zoning regulations currently permit. The bill is a victory for affordable housing advocates, who have been saying for a number of years that the burden of building more parking than tenants use has made affordable housing too expensive to build.

LA Gets its First Parking-Protected Bike Lanes

2015-04-07T17:26:00-04:00

Yesterday, the city of Los Angeles installed its first ever parking-protected bike lanes. They’re on Reseda Boulevard in Northridge, part of the mayor’s Great Streets Initiative. As of this morning, the project is roughly one-quarter complete. The new protected lanes, also known as cycletracks, are mostly complete on the west side of Reseda Blvd from Plummer Street to Prairie Street. The full one-mile protected lanes will go from Plummer to Parthenia Street.

Los Angeles has Created the Perfect Parking Sign

2015-04-06T15:11:00-04:00

In the quest to make parking suck less, there are apps that help you find a space, and meters where you can pay with a swipe of your credit card. But LA has launched a simple, low-tech solution to make parking better: Well-designed signage that offers no ambiguity whatsoever when it comes to where you can park, when you can park there, and how much it will cost.

UCLA professor and "parking guru" Donald Shoup to retire

2015-03-31T17:40:00-04:00

After 41 years of teaching at UCLA, Donald Shoup, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, will retire on June 30. [...] Shoup is widely known as the “parking guru” whose ideas on parking policies have been implemented in cities around the world. His influential book, "The High Cost of Free Parking" ... has led a growing number of cities to adapt new policies for parking requirements and to charge fair market prices for curb parking.

Parking is a gigantic factor in determining how cities in the U.S. look and function, and no one knows that better than Donald Shoup. Any parking study worth its salt is indebted to Shoup's research.

Flexible Parking Structures as Civic Catalysts

2014-11-24T14:55:00-05:00

First, parking structures need to be used for longer periods of the day and for different purposes, both public and private. [...] Second, parking structures need to be designed as flexible structures that can accommodate transitions from parking alone to a variety of other uses as parking ratios decline with further mixed-use development and increased use of shared parking facilities and transit.

Robot Ray Parks Your Car At The Airport

2014-11-03T13:08:00-05:00

Are you in a hurry to catch your flight and still need to find a parking place? Meet Ray, a shiny robot that parks your car at Düsseldorf Airport in Germany. Ray makes sure you don’t have to park miles away from the terminal, eliminating the hassle of finding a parking place. Just drop off your car within a few meters from the check-in area [...]. When you come back from a holiday or business trip, the robot will make sure your car is ready to go when you walk out of the airport.

Trading Parking Lots for Affordable Housing

2014-09-16T17:19:00-04:00

9 x 18. In square feet, that’s 162, smaller than the most micro micro-apartment. It is the size of a typical parking space. That lowly slice of asphalt has prompted three young architects — Miriam Peterson, Sagi Golan and Nathan Rich, fellows at the Institute for Public Architecture — to come up with what could be an innovative way to ease the housing crisis.