Parking requirements have been considered a function of
occupant activity since the introduction of zoning regulations. The concept has
maintained that more intense activity requires more parking spaces. For
instance, 1 parking space might justify 50 gross sq. ft. of restaurant activity
or 200 gross sq. ft. of office activity. The concept, however, has produced two
intractable problems: (1) The requirements are averages that are not tailored
to the needs of a specific enterprise, and (2) The requirements do not solve
pre-existing conditions that flood neighboring areas with incompatible overflow
parking demand.
In both cases, land is the underlying issue. In new
construction, a parking requirement can reduce the land available for a
building footprint and the gross building area that can be constructed. In
existing areas, there may be no land available to provide adequate parking. There
will never be a perfect parking solution given the two problems noted, but the
lack of perfection is not an excuse to ignore a fundamental problem as proposed
in the following quotation:
Off-street parking should be a business decision,
not a government decision.
Business is not motivated by the public interest, and I will
argue that adequate parking for successive owners has significant public
implications. It may help to begin by explaining the place of parking in a site
plan and the design specification values that combine to produce its need for
land.
New Construction
All land areas contain various percentages of four
ingredients: (1) Unbuildable land area, (2) Buildable land area, (3) Common, or
shared, buildable land area, and (4) Shelter land area. When common areas are
not provided, buildable land area is equal to shelter land area.
Shelter land area contains various percentages of five
ingredients, and one or more of these percentages may be zero: (1) Unpaved open
space, (2) Service pavement, (3) Social pavement, (4) Parking pavement, and (5)
Building footprint. When shelter is the issue, the first three layers are
subtracted from the shelter area remaining to find the core area available for
parking pavement and building footprint. The ratio between parking and
footprint area combines with floor quantity to determine gross building area
potential.
In other words, parking quantity determines the gross
building area that can be constructed. Each additional parking space permits
additional gross building area, but reduces the surface land area remaining for
the building footprint. The building increases in height with a smaller
footprint to accommodate the increased area permitted; but the relationship between
parking and footprint stops producing meaningful increases in gross building area
above five stories, when all other design specification values remain constant.
The shelter capacity of land is the gross building area that
can be constructed per shelter acre. It is a function of design specification
decisions that are correlated by an architectural algorithm for use in a master
equation. The equation pertains to the design category under consideration and
predicts gross building area options based on four variables:
1) The gross building area permitted per parking space (a),
also known as a parking requirement.
2) The number of building floors under consideration (f).
3) The estimated gross parking lot area per parking space, (s).
4) The core land area available for parking lot and building footprint
area after estimates for all other site plan areas have been subtracted (CORE).
The Design Specification Template in Table 1 pertains to the
G1 Surface Parking Design Category and illustrates the calculation of core area
in cell F32. The parking requirement (a) is entered in cell F34. An estimate of
gross parking lot area per space (s) is entered in cell F33. Building floor
quantity options (f) are noted in cells A42-A51. The master equation in cell
A37 predicts gross building area options related to building height options in
cells B52-B51. This is the point when the impact of a parking requirement
becomes clear - and the point when it becomes vulnerable to variance requests
when it does not produce a desired gross building area. This is not the only
option, however. Since there are 25 specification boxes in the table, values
can be modified to pursue change in many ways, but the design specification
template in Table 1 is not in common use. In its absence, the expedient owner
choice has been to reduce the parking provided to increase gross building area,
but this can sacrifice its usefulness to successive owners and its public
revenue potential over time. Since the city is essentially a farm, the yield
from each of its acres determines the quality of life it can afford to provide.
Table 2 is based on a core area of 24,829 sq. ft. and an
estimate of 400 sq. ft. per parking space. It presents a range of parking
requirement options (a) on line 4. When these values are entered in cell F34 of
Table 1, the table produces the gross building area options displayed in
columns B-Q. If an owner had a choice among the parking requirements listed on
line 4, most would choose the regulation that produces the desired gross
building area with the least building height. The number of parking spaces
might prove inadequate, but they would choose to live with the result and hope
for the best. This is not necessarily in the public interest, however. A
failing activity leaves a vacant building with inadequate parking that consumes
potentially productive acres. Parking is an essential ingredient in this
equation and its impact is felt long after the original owner’s departure.
In other words, a building owner is a temporary investor in
shelter for activity on a given land area; and may also be a total or partial
occupant of the premises. The building represents a permanent source of public
revenue that fluctuates with location, condition and succeeding occupant
activity. Under these circumstances, a privately owned building is a public
resource that can be compromised by a parking quantity that proves insufficient
for future activity. The City of Buffalo, NY has chosen to make parking
quantity a business decision. We will never understand the impact until
knowledge emerges from the adoption of scientific measurement, evaluation, and
forecasting techniques.[1]
Pre-Existing
Conditions
A city is an anatomy that grows at the cellular level of
property ownership, and it surrounds its defects when there is land to annex. Unfortunately,
a sprawling city does not learn to correct its mistakes and control its
tendency to consume and pollute the land that is its source of life. In a way,
sprawling cities represent an attempt to return to the farm where open space is
abundant and equipment can be stored conveniently. Property in a surrounded
city cannot expand, and density is magnified by increasing movement and
decreasing open space donated to parked cars.
It is inevitable that business would attempt to serve
residents in these areas under the deficient conditions created by the
automobile, but decline is inevitable when intensity exceeds the limits of
tolerance for those who can afford to escape. Columns G-J in Table 1 show that
physical intensity, intrusion, and dominance are functions of 25 specification
values that can be measured. In my
opinion, the physical conditions created by these specification values affect
our social, psychological, environmental, and economic quality of life. They
combine within each property cell, and every cell combines with others to form
the Shelter Division of The Built Domain. This division is served by Movement,
Open Space, and Life Support Divisions within a currently pathogenic anatomy that
is encouraged by our concepts of annexation within a world without end. My
point is that the parking values in cells F33 and F34 are two of these 25
specification values. They are generalizations when related to a specific
activity, but they cannot be ignored and deferred to private enterprise as an
expedient solution to an intractable problem that currently affects our quality
of life and will affect our symbiotic future.
The problem stems from the fact that we have not been able
to predict the shelter capacity of land with any degree of accuracy, and
capacity is a function of parking requirements. The only certainty is that
parking is an inescapable consideration in the age of the automobile.
Buildings with no on-site parking have deferred their
requirements to others in near-by and remote locations. These locations are
provided and connected to exempt building activity at public expense in many
cases. The parking requirement did not disappear. Its expense was simply
shifted. When expense is shifted to the public side of the ledger, it is
subsidized by the average revenue received from all municipal acres. If revenue
is inadequate to meet expense over time, government is considered profligate.
Budget cuts ensue and decline takes another step toward blight. Inadequate
parking will continue to add a largely unrecognized burden to surrounding
neighborhoods and municipal expense until this relationship is recognized. A
city washes it hands of the problem when it defers parking decisions to private
enterprise; but expedient solutions have a way of producing unintended
consequences, and we cannot continue to consume land and leave our mistakes in
an expanding core of blight.
It is time to come to grips with the true
shelter capacity of land and its economic implications. Growing populations
will never learn to live within symbiotic limits that protect their quality and
source of life until they build the knowledge required, and this knowledge will
not be produced by the expedient solutions of private enterprise.
[1] Hosack, Walter M., The Science of City Design:
Architectural Algorithms for City Planning and Design Leadership,
CreateSpace, 2016. (Available in paperback and e-book versions from Amazon.com)
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