Search Results
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To Stop Building Heat Islands, Stop Overbuilding Parking Lots
Update, July 2023: In 2022, Oregon’s Land Conservation and Development Commission adopted rules to reduce minimum parking ratios for jurisdictions within metropolitan areas, with an option for cities to eliminate all parking mandates. It is a major step forward that will make it possible for future development to be constructed without building more heat islands. Urban heat islands got national attention this past summer after a record heat wave in the Pacific Northwest killed...Read more » -
Yes, Even Walmart Wants to Build Smaller Parking Lots
Nestled near the Columbia River in Wood Village, Oregon, is the largest Walmart in the Portland region. The building spans three-and-a-half football fields, but it’s dwarfed by something else: the surrounding parking lot, twice as big as the store itself. When it expanded from a Walmart to a Walmart Supercenter in 2004, its floor space increased by 45 percent. Its parking lot grew less, though, only adding 36 percent more spaces. Turns out, Walmart has been quietly reducing its parking ratios for years. Case study: Walmart follows consumer behavior, reduces parking “Every time we reevaluate, we pull it...Read more » -
Will Portland Finally Accelerate the Pace of Parking Reform?
“Urgent.” A Portland task force studying how to use pricing tools to make the transportation system more equitable used the word five times in their final recommendations, which are expected to be adopted by city council on October 13th. But is the city up to the task? Side by side with new ideas are ones that somehow keep coming back to city hall every couple years, with few results to...Read more » -
Study: Yes, More Parking Does Put More Cars on the Road
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Verified: More Parking Puts More Cars on the Road
Do cities create greener lifestyles? Or do they just enable them? It’s very, very, very clear that people who live closer to other people drive less. But how much of this is due to the fact that people who were already predisposed to driving less—those of us who don’t particularly enjoy driving, for example—are deliberately living where parking is scarce and buses are frequent? A forthcoming academic paper finally begins...Read more » -
The Hidden Costs of “Over-Parking” Our Cities
The hidden costs of over-parking our cities: Excessive parking rules put cars before people–hiking home prices and pollution.Read more » -
Oregon Just Ended Excessive Parking Mandates On Most Urban Lots
The movement to prioritize housing for people over storage for cars has reached a new high point in the Pacific Northwest. In the first action of this kind by any US state, Oregon’s state land use board voted unanimously last week to sharply downsize dozens of local parking mandates on duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhomes, and cottages. Many cities have reduced or eliminated parking mandates in recent years, including Oregon’s largest...Read more » -
Great News: Portland’s Next Rail Line May Have Fewer Parking Garages
The people planning the Portland area’s next light-rail line seem to be steering away from a scenario where taxpayers waste $100 million of precious public-transit funding on a series of giant parking garages. But unless the public speaks up in the next month, it’s possible that a handful of elected officials will push to build the garages anyway—despite a mountain of evidence that spending the money on bus service, infrastructure...Read more » -
Seattle’s Democracy Vouchers: Already sparking a lively election season
Seattleites are flooding a small office in the Seattle Municipal Tower with stacks of mail. In the last eight weeks, city residents have sent more than 43,000 democracy vouchers to the city, each a small publicly funded donation to candidates running for city office. Though several public financing programs exist across the United States, Seattle’s voucher model is the first of its kind. This year marks only the second time...Read more » -
Santa Cruz’s Outdated Parking Laws a Recipe for High Rents and Homelessness