For an urbanist, traveling can evoke jealously, pride in one’s own city, and any number of “what were they thinkings” and “wow, good ideas.” My recent trip to Denver brought all of these. While bigger cities inspire more jealousy, Denver is a more realistic peer than Tokyo, with plenty to learn and compare.

Direct garage access in Denver using sidewalk space. Photo by Matt Hays.

I was impressed. It’s a good, comfortable, growing city that’s doing a lot of things right. It offers many lessons in what Seattle might do better, along with others we shouldn’t do.

On the urbanity front, Denver has historically had less core density than Seattle. It also started the infill trend later and more slowly. But today neighborhoods ringing Downtown and other key spots are sprouting apartments seemingly everywhere, much like Seattle though without large towers and with more (probably too much) parking. A critical mass of residential convenience appears to be forming in greater Downtown, though groceries are reportedly hard to come by.

Axis of skybridges into downtown Denver. Photo by Matt Hays.

Seattle is very rare in that Downtown serves all the major purposes: offices, government, events, vacations, housing, transportation, shopping, and culture. Downtown Denver does all this to some extent except large scale shopping and tourism. The main core retail district is a few miles southeast at Cherry Creek, which has a large enclosed mall plus a sizeable neighborhood of higher-end retail and restaurants that appears to be very successful. Within Downtown proper, retail is generally on the 16th Street Mall (a pedestrian and shuttle bus corridor similar to Nicollet in Minneapolis). This is a fantastic street, lined with restaurants and shops for much of its length. At the center is Denver Pavilions, which is the size and function of Pacific Place but on more than twice the land. The street cries out for stores like Nordstrom and Target. Their problem might be similar to Seattle’s Pine Street – additional stores would like to move in but there’s no easy room on 16th. Streets like 15th have plenty of room but they’d have to create their own critical mass. Also, major stores would have to cannibalize Cherry Creek. On the tourism front, Downtown lacks major draws, and no areas feel touristy though 16th, historic LoDo, and the civic center and museum area get their share.

As Seattle plans a second convention center (or is it called an expansion?) some perspective is useful. Denver often hosts conventions of 10,000 to 15,000 people and has about 7,500 Downtown hotel rooms. Seattle hosts conventions generally below 6,000 people but has 12,000 Downtown hotel rooms in a similar zone. Their hotels are more convention-dependent than ours, with less pleasure tourism. Their way creates a boom/bust tourism economy, a common pattern in cities that use big convention centers to overcome a lack of vacationers. Our way creates steadier demand that augments our larger pleasure tourism economy rather than dominating. Expanding the WSCC would build upon this. Seattle’s typical conventions would still be of moderate size relative to our hotel inventory, while covering more of the calendar. We should build this.

We often lament Seattle’s land prices and availability. From an urbanist perspective, Denver shows the opposite problem – with lots of relatively cheap land, things tend to be too spread out. The convention center, while efficiently atop a light rail line and street, also covers a massive 25 acres. The new football stadium and basketball arena, multi-college Auraria Campus, and Elitch’s Garden amusement park, all on the southwest periphery of Downtown, have something like 100 acres of surface parking between them (based on Google Maps and a straightedge), roughly equal to everything between Yesler and Weller from I-5 to the viaduct. New apartments in some of Denver’s cheaper core districts sometimes have surface parking, and many have above-grade garages next to the housing rather than below it. Even the neighborhood-integrated Coors Field baseball park are has a parking lot extending along the railroad for well over a mile(!) northwest averaging a block wide. The good news (from this perspective) is that things are filling in at a decent clip, which should change the dynamic.

There are other positives to cheap, plentiful land. Denver built its Commons Park, and it’s nicely done alongside the even nicer Confluence Park. At the latter, two streams intersect, each with bike trails. A short stretch has been rebuilt as a rippled stream, a popular spot for kayaks and body boards. The area around both is booming with housing, aided by a sequence of pedestrian bridges that go over train tracks, then the South Platte “River,” then a freeway, into another neighborhood that’s also booming. It’s a pleasant walk and appears to be a popular draw. Overall, Downtown Denver has a lot more places to sit than Downtown Seattle. Many are shady. Seattle has way too many parks without shade. Wouldn’t it be great to have Philadelphia’s lightly shaded Rittenhouse Square, in Belltown maybe?

Denver looks like an easier bike city than Seattle. Being flat helps. It also has a lot of bike lanes, and the converging streams each have long trails leading outward from Downtown. As for walking, Downtown has a lot of “pedestrians all ways” lights, which sound fine in theory but are terrible in practice. At one, pedestrians could cross about 1/4 of the time by my count. Apparently, grouping people gets them out of the way of cars. Seattle should do this kind of signal only where the cycle has two parts maximum – pedestrians-cars-pedestrians-cars, like First & Pike.

Some below-grade parking garages have ramps that go below-grade within the public right of way then curve under sidewalks. This seems fine in practice, but they do it within the sidewalk area rather than in a parking lane. Each has a way for pedestrians to get around. This has good and bad points. They tend to be inconvenient for pedestrians, but might be better than having cars in the way. It must be faster for the cars and seems safer for everybody.

Denver has a growing transit system. Light rail is largely at ground level, running on Downtown streets and freeway corridors. Some train and bus routes terminate at the edge of Downtown, with riders transfering to the free 16th Street Mall Shuttle. This is efficient in some ways (the shuttles are frequent and buses and riders don’t crowd the streets) but transfers presumably reduce ridership. Per the 2011 American Community Survey (confusingly presented at census.gov), the Denver metro had 4.3% transit commuting compared to Seattle’s metro at 8.1%. This suggests that transfers and highway rail alignments might be problematic for ridership, and that Seattle’s spiderweb of buses is useful to a lot more people. It’s also thanks to our higher core densities of residents and jobs. Within city limits, the numbers were 7.5% transit for Denver (plus 4.3% walking) and 18.5% for Seattle (plus 8.9% walking). Denver is building a lot more rail, though another funding measure is needed to build out the full vision. Much of this will center on a refurbished and expanded Union Station, which is half-done but already spurring mixed uses around it along with the Commons nearby.

One of those new rail lines will connect the airport, which is a loooong way into the Great Plains. It’s a fine airport once you’re there, but what a great advertisement for convenient Sea-Tac! From DIA you travel for miles and miles to reach real suburbia, aside from a couple business pods where chain hotels sit in moats of parking. Even the pods are miles from the airport. At Sea-Tac, you can walk from your plane to Link or RapidRide…or even walk to your hotel. Your taxi will be much cheaper too. With Sea-Tac’s consideration of a bridge over planes for International Arrivals, it’s interesting that Denver already has a terminal bridge, though goes over smaller planes.

Another Denver trend is to pick up campuses and move to the suburbs. Malls leapfrogged out, and now several big hospitals have too, a few (Children’s, VA, University of Colorado) moving to the old Fitzsimmons campus in suburban Aurora that’s also the local (lately pretty quiet) attempt at growing a biotech center. They’re presumably making fine decisions, but for urbanists it seems sad to disperse jobs like this. Fitzsimmons has nice buildings but isn’t very integrated into the city.

Now to plug a very good brunch. The Kitchen at 16th & Wazee, near Union Station, was a fantastic meal well served. It turns out that regret equals having just one bite of “Eton Mess,” which is chantilly cream, strawberries, and meringue. And the polenta might be the best ever.

Seattle has invested a great deal in King Street Station and the surrounding area, why not go a little further and make it a world-class transit hub?
Out of the three designated hubs in downtown Seattle, King Street is arguably the primary transit hub bringing together Amtrak, streetcar, local and regional bus, and light rail. In the not too distant future, rapid ride from West Seattle and access into downtown from SR-99 will both have significant impacts to this area. Using the already congested street grid to transfer between systems is not a coordinated nor safe approach for transit riders.  

Transbay Transit Center is anticipated to have a patronage of 100,000 every weekday and 45 million annually. Photo credit: © Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects

All the transit systems in the hub are just a block or two away from where you hoped they would be.  Light Rail is a trek across 4th from King Street Station; bus stops on Jackson are one-two blocks away; and the First Hill streetcar stops are a block or two in either direction. The City and transit agencies need to think bigger, in a way that leverages the investments in this hub including the restoration of the historic station, the North Lot, Union Station, and the Stadium District. In early thinking about the North Lot there was an idea proposed that included a significant bus terminal proposed for 4th Ave S over the BNSF tracks- this would provide the opportunity to create a stacked connection including Sounder, local bus, and perhaps an underground connection to Link. It’s time to start thinking about this facility now so that the promise of a real transit hub can be realized and the benefits of investment in the neighborhood can bring about real change.  Change that’s been planned for in the Livable South Downtown Plan.

The experience of San Francisco has an uncanny comparison.
Downtown San Francisco is a maze of cranes these days and the 6-block long gaping hole next to Mission Street that will become the Transbay Transit Center is a healthy contributor to the current crane count. With an anticipated patronage of 100,000 every weekday and 45 million annually, Transbay will be one of the largest transit hubs on the West Coast. From local rail and bus service to Amtrak and Greyhound, Transbay will provide the hub for more than 8 transit agencies including Caltrain and High Speed Rail. Originally built in 1939 to handle electric trolley service (and later bus service) from the newly constructed Bay Bridge, the original building was razed and along with several earthquake related ramp removals that provided the real estate and a significant source of funding for the new Transbay Center. The new Transbay was conceived in 2008 and is to be completed in 2017. But even the 70’ deep hole in Soma is already spurring development including the Transbay Tower- planned to be 200′ taller than the Transamerica pyramid.
Seattle has the opportunity now to rethink how transit systems come together at King Street Station and to create a world-class transit center befitting a world-class city.

Successful street corner at 36th Ave SW and SW Snoqualmie St in West Seattle. Photo by Nate Cormier.

Last time I promised to contrast that miserable corner of 35th Ave SW and SW Avalon Way in West Seattle with something more gracious. This one is three blocks away at the corner of 36th Ave SW and SW Snoqualmie St. The context is quite different in terms of available right of way, traffic volumes and level of investment by the adjacent developer, but my interest here is in highlighting some of the aspects that make it a successful street corner.

• There are wide and nicely landscaped curb bulbs to slow traffic and buffer pedestrians at the corner from passing automobiles.
• The building entry is close to the intersection with decent transparency to the lobby so there should be a good amount of foot traffic and eyes on the street here.
• There is a seating area near the intersections for passersby to take a break. This is particularly valuable for seniors and others that pause frequently while walking. Hopefully once they lease up the apartment building they can get rid of those plastic signboards.
• There is a broad area between the ramps that is separated by a curb from turning traffic. This makes waiting to cross feel safer.
• The curb ramps align with the sidewalks and the unmarked crosswalks so the visually impaired can more easily guess the correct angle to make their way to the paired ramp on the other side of each street. Note that this leaves a triangular bit at the bottom of the ramp that needs to be carefully graded to not collect water.
• Finally, and this one is tiny, but the attention to detail is sweet…where the tactile warning strips meet adjacent curbwalls, there are subtle joints aligned with the tactile tiles. They may play a role in controlling cracking of the curb, but I like how they make those tactile strips appear rooted intentionally in those locations. Too often tactile warning strips look glued on as afterthoughts. Not here.

All in all, a solid contribution to the public realm!

Dr. Seuss-like trees, strangled by clematis vines, sadly fill our greenbelts.

As Earth Day approaches (April 22 this year) I am reminded, as I have been every year over the past couple decades, of how poorly managed our City’s urban forests are, especially in the most central neighborhoods, such as Queen Anne Hill, Capitol Hill, and Beacon Hill.  Living on Queen Anne Hill, I have frequent occasion to walk, bike or drive by the various segments of “greenbelt” that have been purchased by the City over the yaears with parks levy dollars.  Case in point is the “Northeast Queen Anne Greenbelt” – a compendium of disaggregated full and half-blocks of forested hillside that in some cases stretch for a few blocks and in others are simply single-block in-holdings.  In this area in particular the “urban forest” – for want of a better term – is in such poor condition that one wonders if a controlled burn or some other scorched-earth approach might not be in order to start over.

While there’s no denying that undeveloped swaths of green space offer a welcome respite from the dense development in our central urban neighborhoods, when they are choked with vines and other intrusive vegetation, harbor rats and other vermin, and are essentially inaccessible for a casual urban hike, are they really serving the purpose they were likely intended to do – at taxpayer expense?

Not so many years ago it seemed the universally feared vegetative invaders were English ivy (Hedera helix) and Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus).  That’s not to say that they have ceased fulfilling this invidious role, but over the past 15 years or so, especially in the most central urban forests, the dreaded wild oriental clematis (Clematis orientalis) has taken a foothold and is on the rampage.

Entire blocks of greenbelt are a tangle of vines, with small hillocks where trees used to stand.

This rapacious vine leaves the other two behind by leaps and bounds – literally.  This plant’s vines thrust upward onto tree canopies and literally engulf an entire tree.  I’ve seen greenbelt acreage in my neighborhood that formerly sported a variety of individual trees now resemble a Dr. Seuss-like living carpet of vines with indistinguishable hillocks of vine mass where the trees once stood.  What’s more, these vines so aggressively pull on their victims that branches and even small trees literally fall over under their weight.  I witnessed a large branch of a big-leaf maple come tumbling down into the sidewalk and one of the southbound travel lanes of Aurora Avenue North.

Perhaps the worst effect of all of these invasives in our greenbelt lands, even if individual trees find a way to survive their onslaught, is that the potential for a new generation of tree canopy is all but lost across these pockets of greenbelt.  With the understory almost entirely engulfed in vines of one sort or another, new saplings or seedlings have no chance of survival.  And as our mostly deciduous urban forests reach their maturity (most big-leaf maples and alders have a lifespan of only 75 years or so), what will we be left with to grace our hillsides?  Tangled masses of vines clinging to dead snags?

I know that municipal budgets are tight and our City’s pressing needs are many, but it may be time to consider appropriating some even modest amounts to fund incremental rescue efforts in our taxpayer-purchased greenbelt areas. Volunteers do help, and I have a long-standing tradition of going out, heavy-duty clippers in hand, on every Earth Day weekend to do my small part, but volunteers alone cannot take it all on.  I hope the City will see the wisdom in helping to stem this insidious tide.

Image courtesy Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty

Sometimes we forget how lucky we are. Sure, Downtown Seattle isn’t perfect. But what other downtown (or “greater downtown”) in the US has all of the following in combination?

- A strong office base that’s the dominant core of its region

- Leadership in the technology, research, and innovation economy

- Room to grow

- Great shopping, from major chains to mom & pops

- Lots of tourism, including business and pleasure visitors

- A good number of residents, from 20-somethings to retirees, and from rich to starving artists

- Excellent arts and entertainment – performing, visual, movies, etc.

- Fantastic scenery and natural setting

- A mix of new, old, innovative, and traditional

- A heart and soul with numerous beloved touchpoints

The “room to grow” point might seem odd. We city enthusiasts tend to love cities that are already mostly full, like Boston, and we can be impatient that Seattle isn’t there yet. But a downtown is an economic engine, not just for enjoyment. Accommodating growth and change is crucial in a growing region and changing world. Seattle is lucky that (a) we have growing organizations, (b) that they want to be in the center of town, and (c) that the center of town has room for them, at any size.

We also owe a big thanks to tourists, an often maligned group. Many do nothing more than fly in, drop hundreds (or thousands) on clothes, hotels, and related taxes, and leave. They subsidize our museums, which can be far more ambitious because of it. They give restaurants more reason to open beyond standard lunch and dinner times. Most don’t drive, as evidenced by the small garages at our hotels. So what if they get in the way sometimes. Why not be glad for the boost, and even flattered that they chose to come?

That gets to the biggest key for a vibrant downtown – variety. If you want great retail and busy sidewalks, you need a lot of types of people doing a lot of types of things. Office workers bring peak daytime crowds and busy lunch places. Residents buy furniture and groceries, and are always around regardless of time and weather. Retirees, service workers, artists, and executives are all valued customers for broad ranges of stores. Special credit goes to any group that adds activity without focusing it all on 8:00 am and 5:00 pm, like students and tourists.

We’re not only doing well on every front, but improving in most. Retail, offices, tourism, housing, research, and the arts are all growing. As a result, we will gain vibrancy, while the “room to grow” gradually diminishes. And maybe we’ll be even luckier.

It’s the late 1980s. A Lower Queen Anne resident is in the habit of scaling the fence to get to Myrtle Edwards Park, sometimes even climbing over slow-moving trains to get there. He hadn’t heard the Blue Scholars song posted on SeattleScape October 11th.

Myrtle Edwards is a heck of a park, and a great route north and south. But it’s always been (nearly) impossible to get to for thousands of nearby residents and workers without going the long way around. Thankfully the temptation to risk fate just went away.

On Friday, the West Thomas Street Pedestrian and Bicycle Overpass opened! Based upon a visit Sunday morning, it already seems popular. A steady stream of people wandered across in both directions, despite the wet streets and ominous clouds, looking very pleased. It’s a good bet that nearby office workers will do the same on work days.

The bridge is a major boost to Seattle’s bike and pedestrian network, including a lot of commuters. In one of the busiest parts of town, and a crossroads, getting anywhere has meant using major, unfriendly roads to get past the tracks. Now, someone working near the Seattle Center and living in Ballard finally has a direct bike route home entirely on the trail and minor streets, assuming he or she goes over the Locks. In a few years even South Lake Union will be have a highway-free route to Elliott Bay.

Of course, having great parks is important by itself, whether for quality of life or economic development, if the former is too namby-pamby for you. Cities that prosper tend to be places people want to live in. People that prosper, in any sense, are often the ones who like where they are, or get inspired by where they are, with plenty of opportunity for both exercise and relaxation. A short walk to have lunch with the waves lapping at the rocks while watching ships pass the snow-capped Olympics…that’ll do it.

It’s not perfect yet. The middle section of the park could use minor upgrades as more people visit and linger near the bridge. A few more benches would be the minimum. Eventually a larger hardscape area would make sense, maybe with a water feature. Lighting that small area at night would also encourage more use, including winter pedestrian and bike commuting.

Here are two more needs going forward: One is a direct stairway from the Magnolia Bridge to the Elliott Bay Trail (the existing one requires walking over the tracks and is sometimes blocked off). Most important of all is continuing the Thomas (or thereabouts) connection east with a skybridge to Capitol Hill, connecting our densest census tracts with our fastest growing employment center.

Right now, possibly September 26th specifically, represents the largest amount of new housing construction greater Downtown Seattle has ever had. This is very exciting for those who want Seattle to feel and function like a real big city, with the vibe, services, walkable lifestyles, and so on that entails.

The “largest” is based upon my own napkin count of housing under construction in about 2,000 acres, from Lower Queen Anne and South Lake Union to the dense part of Capitol Hill to First Hill and the stadiums, gerrymandered up to 901 Dexter and 15th & Pine. It’s imprecise but probably errs low, particularly east of I-5. The 2006 in-construction number topped out at 5,500 units. This week, including some projects that just got building permits and have had some sort of recent activity (at least demo), or had DJC coverage about starting this week, the number is 6,400 units. Or call it 6,000, in case some aren’t real starts.

So where does that leave us in that journey to big citydom, or, using the Vancouver example, smaller-but-more-vibrant-in-some-ways citydom?

The Downtown Seattle Association reports 60,000 residents in 2012, based on census tracts that are vaguely similar to the area I described. They call it 20,510 residents per square mile. By comparison, Vancouver’s Downtown Peninsula, in just 1,420 acres, had 99,000 residents in 2011 for a density of 44,387 per square mile. Including Seattle’s recent completions plus the 6,000 units and a normal multiplier, we should end up with 70,000 residents. That’s excellent by US standards for a city our size (roughly double a similar count in Denver or Minneapolis, which are well ahead of Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, and many others), but to reach Vancouver’s Downtown Peninsula density, we’d need 130,000. At Manhattan density, we’d have 210,000.

Whether we’ll continue along this path hardly seems debatable. New construction might outpace demand, briefly. But Amazon and a steady inflow of local employer relocations are expanding greater Downtown’s workforce. Perhaps the most important driver, basic desire to live in the center, should grow as services are added and new residents make neighborhoods feel friendlier, a circular effect. The demographics will be fantastic for a while due to both baby boomers and their kids. And apparently driving to work is never going to be cheap or quick again, making a short walk attractive to more people. Even if people start buying rather than renting, very little supply will be available, particularly condos. And that will kick off more condo projects.

So here’s hoping the boom never ends (!) or at least keeps coming back, preferably with soft landings. And maybe when we hit 80,000 Belltown will have a supermarket and a conveyor-belt sushi place.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has launched a competition that calls for about 80 micro studio apartments of 275 to 300 square feet in Manhattan. The city is seeking proposals to design, construct and operate the micro-unit building on a city-owned site. Seattle already has a number of these type units, some of which a developer dubbed apodments. Here is the Wall Street Journal story about the competition.

The 30-unit Avenida developed byCalhoun Properties in Seattle's University District has apartments of about 150 to 200 square feet.

ZGF Architects Seattle partner Allyn Stellmacher has been traveling to remote areas of Northern Saskatchewan to visit with schoolchildren and community members to hear what they want in the design of their new Children’s Hospital. Joined to Royal University Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Saskatchewan will be a maternal and children’s hospital. Currently in design, it is scheduled to open in late 2016. Saskatoon Health Region is the largest health region in Saskatchewan, serving approximately 300,000 local residents in more than 100 cities, towns, and villages. It is a provincial center providing specialized care to thousands of people from across the province.
Along with Children’s Hospital of Saskatchewan officials, Stellmacher and Terri Johnson, an interior design principal, are visiting communities only accessible by aircraft, or seasonal roads, including Stony Rapids, La Ronge, Ile a la Crosse and Meadow Lake. The team has met with kids in grades 2 – 9, to hear what they would want in the hospital, should they need to use it.  ZGF said the children want to have family with them, and to have familiar sights around them.

Henry Downing Howlett is the prime architect for the project and ZGF Architects is the secondary architect.
The project manager is ZW Group. The mechanical engineers are Affiliated Engineers and Daniels Wingerak Engineering Ltd. and the structural engineers are Halcrow and Brownlee Beaton Kreke.

View a pictorial from the planning process in Northern Saskatchewan here.

Allyn Stellmacher and Terri Johnson of ZGF Architects with schoolchildren from Ile a la Crosse as they discuss design for Saskatoon’s new Children’s Hospital.

Sometimes the City of Seattle does something awesome. On Wednesday, the City Council Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability Committee might move forward on reduced or eliminated parking requirements in new residential and commercial buildings in some core neighborhoods with good transit, as part of a broader Municipal Code update. Of course nearly all developments will continue to include parking, often lots of it; the point is the City won’t force developers to build it, or as much, in some areas. The Council is considering overlapping concepts by the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) and the Seattle Planning Commission. The Planning Commission link has a good map showing the relatively small areas affected.

Less parking required?

Here are some reasons reduced requirements are outstanding policy:

1. It’s about “right-sizing” parking to what will actually be used. Developers want to have enough – too few spaces and their housing or commercial space won’t rent or sell, or won’t at the right price; too many and they’re wasting money. So they’ll guess, probably conservatively in most cases. The exceptions will be developers who specifically target tenants without cars, such as students, 20-somethings, or low-income seniors. Others will build more spaces than average. In neighborhoods with precedent, the developers have gotten good at predicting demand. For example, new mid-price apartment buildings on the edges of Downtown will often build 0.7 to 0.9 spaces per unit or thereabouts, with zero required.

2. Its about affordability. Unused spaces cost tens of thousands of dollars each to develop, even before specific site challenges such as inefficient geometries or groundwater. That’s a huge added cost shared by the developer (if the project pencils at all) and the residents of the building. Skipping that cost is a big help for providing new housing at reasonable cost. Regarding the lower price points not covered by subsidy, all housing tends to move downmarket over the decades; the units we’re talking about will drop at a similar pace from a lower starting point (or more quickly if you believe these units won’t be in demand). Also, with less parking architects can design more housing units or commercial space on a given site, which ought to reduce land costs per unit, even if the land itself is worth slightly more because it’s more developable. (Some detractors claim developers won’t pass the savings along, but when developers and building owners compete against each other, of course they’ll compete on price.)

3. It’s not a big reduction. The reduced requirements only apply to new buildings (obviously!). Even decades from now, most housing will still date to the years when parking was required for all units nearly everywhere. Mix in some buildings with ratios like 0.8 and the average won’t drop much. Tenants will self-select, with the car-less not paying extra for parking and those with cars choosing to pay their way. Detractors claim street parking will be jammed…not relevant if developers meet their targets, and a self-limiting factor regardless.

4. It’s about equality. Currently, people without cars are generally required to pay for parking they don’t use, effectively subsidizing the people who do use it. With reduced parking ratios, most owners will rent parking separately, and pay their own way – they’ll pay about what they do now, and the rest of us will pay less.

5. It’s already working. Much of greater Downtown hasn’t required parking in decades. Other districts reduced or eliminated their requirements more recently. So we’re seeing a lot of more reasonable ratios in those areas, balancing cost and demand. It’s the free market at work. Since there’s precedent, developers can see how a price point, unit size, and location translates, on average, into a number of parking spaces that will be used, meaning they can predict demand with decent accuracy.

Please pass this, Council!