>> BACK GROUND Guest comment Parking Trends – A Century Later …Rethinking Parking As an urban planner I am fascinated by parking and how we think, or do not think, about it. Parking and associated traffic impacts on the attractiveness of the place, ease of local movement and the desire to stay and spend time and money in that place. Despite this, urban planners, designers, and others concerned with ‘place’, typically overlook the ‘elephant in the room’, therefore enabling parking outcomes focused on easy, cheap car access to places – diminished places that are not worth visit- ing. The place experience - attracting and engaging people and entertaining the mon- ey out of their pockets must be an end goal for planners, including those concerned with parking policy. Understanding this issue led me to de- velop the ‘Rethinking Parking’ project – this is a helicopter view of the ‘why’ issue using five themes: (1) the impact of parking on place, (2) policy, (3) politics, (4) professional practice and (5) pricing – let’s call them the 5Ps. They are explained in some detail in a series of programs I’ve produced for the ‘Re- thinking Parking’ YouTube channel, but here is the gist: Parking Impacts on Place Modern ‘drive-in’ centres are typically de- signed to protect their commercial core, with parking on the periphery. In contrast, tradi- tional centres have been gutted for parking in the core – atomising the urban form, reduc- ing density, and compromising the sense of place. Parking replaces active and animated edges with congested car park entries and in- active walls or at-grade parking voids. Parking in the centre creates traffic con- gestion, exacerbated by static signage that in- vites drivers into full car parks, creating more local congestion. Parking traffic compromis- es local access and walkability, cycling and access to transit. When off-street car parks are accessed from the ‘Main Street’ or side streets, vehicles must cross highly trafficked footpaths. Pedestrian movement is subordi- nated to vehicles, and increased right of way conflicts lead to accidents and fatalities. Parking Policy – Case Studies There are lessons to be learnt from studies of vibrant people-oriented places. I have studied beach centres, recreational precincts, malls, and transit-oriented places and find that those places with an integrated parking/place policy tend to succeed where others fail. The Politics of Parking Values and beliefs rooted in our sub-con- scious are not facts but they do tend to dominate parking policy debate, hence the tendency towards emotion and populism. We forget that a century ago, urban roads were spaces shared by transit, bicycles, horse/cart, and pedestrians, even children at play – a factor in the extraordinary child/car ‘accident’ fatality rates. The era of the ‘shared’ road ended as newly established au- to clubs, representing a privileged few, with sympathetic media/politicians, successfully lobbied for driving/parking rights. They es- tablished the sense of entitlement, that to- day, in a very different world, most us hold blindly and firmly to. Parking and Professional Practice Urban parking is typically treated as a trans- port/traffic planning issue but decisions about parking have a critical impact on the form and function of our cities, centres and local places. Despite this, parking is almost nowhere to be seen in urban planning and design policy and the critical documents that frame desirable land use outcomes for the city. Is urban parking a land use or transport planning issue? The impacts straddle these professions and impact on other disciplines such as urban design and local economic, so- cial and community development. These complex impacts require planning processes that enable integrated place and access plan- ning outcomes? This is a real problem where Author Dr David Mepham is an urban access con- sultant based in Mel- bourne, Australia. He is focussed on best practice urban acces- sibility, including car parking and transit oriented development, supporting a great, walkable, “sticky” place experience. Mepham.consulting@gmail.com parking decisions are treated as ‘rational’ transport/traffic issues. The reality is that parking decisions, like much transport mod- elling, is based on contestable assumptions. Locked out of the policy process, urban plan- ners quietly contemplate the adage: ‘widening roads to solve congestion is like curing obesi- ty by letting your belt out another notch’. Many transport/traffic planners may al- ready agree with the need for a better pro- cess and better outcomes. This leads to the question: Is there a bigger institutional problem here? Do we need to rethink be- yond dysfunctional structures based on in- wardly focussed siloes? Late 1800s/early 1900s it was the significant health and amenity problems related to the horse pow- ered city that largely led to the town/urban planning profession being formed. Mobility was one element of the wider urban plan- ning challenge, at least until the massive in- vestments in highways. At the same time as the highway and mass car were radically re- shaping the form and function of the city, we see transport planning evolving as a dis- tinctive discipline. This has made it difficult to maintain the important professional/ cross policy connections that produce rele- vant and rigorous urban parking policy. The Pricing of Parking In the past decade affordable parking tech- nologies have given effect to theories/ideas such as Demand Responsive Pricing. The re- 28 28 Parking trend international no. 3-2020