Rethinking Parking: Planning and Urban Design Perspectives

Parking has traditionally been viewed from the driver's seat, leading to a failure to understand the significant damage it causes to destinations. Rethinking Parking offers five perspectives from an urban planning and design perspective: place, politics, policy, price, and professional practice, to improve urban parking outcomes and achieve a better balance between parking and place.

Format: Hardback
Length: 330 pages
Publication date: 22 December 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

For much of the past century, we have viewed the issue of parking from the driver's seat, emphasizing the immediate needs of the driver and failing to recognize the significant damage that parking causes to the destination. This approach leads to a failure to understand the amplified damage caused by 'cheap, easy parking at the expense of place and access outcomes.

However, viewing parking from an urban planning and design perspective offers a different perspective that highlights various issues and opportunities. Here are five key perspectives on parking:

Place: If we provided drivers with all the parking they desired, the destination would not be worth visiting. Parking needs to be designed in a way that enhances the overall experience and value of the place.

Politics: Parking is intensely territorial, emotional, and prone to populism, which poses a barrier to strategic and sustainable parking reform. Parking policies need to be approached with a long-term vision and a commitment to equity and sustainability.

Policy: Parking tends to be focused on the immediate needs of the driver at the expense of bigger picture and longer-term policy objectives. Parking policies need to be reevaluated to prioritize the needs of the community as a whole, including accessibility, mobility, and environmental sustainability.

Price: Subsidized parking exists behind opaque pricing mechanisms, making it difficult to understand the true costs of parking. A transparent accounting of costs is essential for strategic parking reform.

Professional practice: Parking is a significant land-use issue that intersects with transport, urban planning, and design. Improving urban parking outcomes requires an integrated and collaborative planning process that involves stakeholders from various sectors.

An alternative view of parking is timely, as new technologies and economies are fundamentally changing our understanding of parking. A potential paradigm shift is in the making, where parking is seen as a tool for enhancing place, promoting accessibility, and improving mobility.

Rethinking Parking provides a valuable pathway to achieving a better parking/place balance and access to destinations worth visiting. It is a comprehensive resource for students, professionals, and policymakers engaged in transport, planning, urban access, and design. By rethinking parking, we can create more sustainable, equitable, and vibrant cities that prioritize the needs of all users and promote a better quality of life for everyone.

Dimension: 254 x 178 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032411484