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. — Los Angeles Times
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.’”
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Back in October of 2016, Emilie Rusch did a similar piece, for which she chatted with local developers and U of M Dean Thomas Fisher, who has studied parking-ramp design for years.
Also noteworthy contra LA, where it sounds like it is solely dependent on "progressive developers" here "In Denver, the ground floor of stand-alone parking garages downtown are required to be suitable for conversion to an active, nonparking use in the future"
That is unless the rules have changed for DTLA since 2009, anyone know?
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