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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

> Less parking improves density which can improve many other things, as well.

Less parking makes density higher, which is a bad thing, not a good thing. Why do you call it an improvement?

People are not livestock to be packed in a tightly as possible. Give me space to live. Everyone should have a basement or a garage where they can keep random tools for random projects.

People should have backyards with enough spacing where they can have solitude from other people.

People should live far enough apart that you don't hear your neighbors.

Are there actually people who prefer to live packed in tightly with other people, in tiny apartments with barely space?

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Having less parking has nothing to do with “living in tiny apartments with barely space”. That doesn’t make any sense and those two things aren’t related at all. You can have less parking - like removing giant surface lots and not having mandatory parking minimums and have space. This isn’t an either-or scenario. In fact, it was the default for many places for a long time. In cities that got a start before cars became dominant you’d see tree-lined streets, beautiful large houses (along with smaller homes, townhomes, apartments, shops, and parks) and backyards for fun. In fact, this is still the default in Europe where so many Americans love to vacation to and talk about how great the towns and cities are.

It’s funny because we would literally have more space if cars and their infrastructure took up less of it. So, in a way you’re advocating for cramming people together.

> People should have backyards with enough spacing where they can have solitude from other people.

> People should live far enough apart that you don't hear your neighbors.

I think that sounds just fine. And you can do that in America today. What does that have to do with living in the city or in nearby residential suburbs?

> That doesn’t make any sense and those two things aren’t related at all

Sure it does, if you have a normal sized house, then you have space in front of the house, on the street where you can park. You also might have a driveway.

And there are no "giant surface lots" needed.

> you’d see tree-lined streets, beautiful large houses

And in front of those houses is a place to park. If the house is properly separated from the neighbor you can even park along the side of the house (if you always put two driveways together from neighboring houses, then driveways save space relative to parking on the road).

> It’s funny because we would literally have more space if cars and their infrastructure took up less of it.

The car is far to useful a tool to get rid of. Why do you think that even people in dense European "utopia car-free cities" still have cars?

I've tried it both ways - I'll never go back. I'll never live in a dense city.

> Sure it does, if you have a normal sized house, then you have space in front of the house, on the street where you can park.

Yes. That’s not really under debate here.

> You also might have a driveway.

You could do that so long as you wanted to waste that space on your lot, but you don’t need that because you can park on the street near your house instead or in your garage behind your house (where the alley is). Personally I’d rather have more green space, or just to have a bigger house since I live at my house and my car is just some random machine that is fine sitting out all day and night in all weather conditions.

> And there are no "giant surface lots" needed.

Right… yet that’s what mandatory minimums and car-first public transit are creating. That’s what we are complaining about.

> The car is far to useful a tool to get rid of. Why do you think that even people in dense European "utopia car-free cities" still have cars?

I’m confused about this statement. Where did I suggest we needed to get rid of cars?

> I've tried it both ways - I'll never go back. I'll never live in a dense city.

I think that’s great! You can totally live in the country. I find it very appealing myself. Just stop the continuous public transit subsidies of highways when we already have more than enough for all future needs for the next 50 years. It doesn’t make sense for people who live 5 miles outside of downtown to have to drive a quarter mile down the road each way to get a gallon of milk. We can’t afford it and we are going to bankrupt ourselves and the planet with this asinine waste of energy. It also has personal benefits for you living in the country because you’ll have fewer people driving.

If people prefer that, they can pay for that. No reason to prohibit others from building denser. Nobody will stop you from buying a lot downtown and replacing the high-rise building with your single family home and adding a multi-car garage. On the other hand you will be stopped if you want to build a high-rise without parking even if lots of people want to live there.

Let's stop telling people what they should want and let the market build what people want. If "the market" builds what nobody wants, some folks are gonna lose some of their own money and someone else will make a profit from correcting it.

Why does @ars have to pay for the situation they want, but you don't? If @ars wants a less dense city, and you want a more dense one, why should you be able to force it on others, but not the other way around? Why don't you move?

The fact of the matter is: many people in the US like it how it is, even if we don't.

I never said someone should subsidize dense housing. I only advocated for removal of requirements that prohibit dense housing and mandate things like parking.

Edit: If anything we currently have the reverse case, with dense areas where infrastructure is shared by many subsidizing less dense areas where roads and houses serve much fewer people while providing less tax revenue. There have been some good articles on here about this over the years.

Everyone should pay for the resources they consume. Lower density requires massively more resources per person, so the people who want it should wind up paying more.

Nobody is advocating forcing everyone to live in dense housing. Our current political/legal system massively favors and subsidizes lower density. Removing that favoritism is not unfair at all.

I'm fine with this but be aware that the catch here is that if you aren't moving dollars around you can't attach strings to those dollars. Controlling funding by gatekeeping it with specific requirements for eligibility is a large part of how the feds control the states and the states control municipalities.

If you don't fund their roads you can't tell them "but you need a sidewalk".

>If you don't fund their roads you can't tell them "but you need a sidewalk".

The Americans with Disabilities Act says you need sidewalks.

And that's exactly why I cited it.

What's the enforcement mechanism if the entity writing the rules doesn't control the purse strings? Tie them up in court for 10yr and then when you finally win they just do something marginally different to the same end (i.e. exactly what we see with civil liberties).

> if you want to build a high-rise without parking even if lots of people want to live there

Yes because those people still own cars and they park those cars in other peoples parking areas. The cars don't magically stop existing, the developer just has a better bottom line because they have been subsidized.

> they park those cars in other peoples parking areas

Isn't it already illegal to park on other people's property without permission?

And what are you going to do about it? Cops aren't coming out to do anything. You don't have the authority to tow them.

Is this a real problem that happens in reality right now? I regularly hear of entitled home owners putting up cones or other stuff to block street parking in front of their house. In fact this has become a popular meme on r/portland. I've never heard of someone parking in someone else's driveway (maybe blocking it, but parking enforcement seems to be a popular revenue stream) or front yard.

If it really is your park, there are several remote control bollard options you can install to block the space.

Also, if police cannot even be motivated to get cars off other people's property, that seems like a big problem that we should address, rather than restricting what we are allowed to build to work around the police not doing their job.

Find a space you enjoy. I enjoy getting able to walk to the grocery store, bookshop, several cafes, many restaurants, hair salon, library, tattoo parlor, beer shop, movie theater, etc.

How many of those places can you visit without a car?

Heh the only one missing from that list in my small town is a bookstore; the Walmart book section doesn't really cut it.

One thing people can get confused on is that density doesn't necessarily go hand-in-hand with mixed usage - you could have relatively low density areas that are extremely mixed so there's always basically everything within 15 minute walk, and you could have very high density apartment buildings with nearly no services to speak of.

Suburbs are especially bad at this because they segregate the living and the sleeping areas far apart from each other (but relatively short by car).

I thought his argument was pro-parking. As such, asking about what he can get to without a car is irrelevant, because he doesn't want to _be_ without a car.

He was saying density is bad. I was suggesting the opposite - it affords access to many and varied services.

I actually have a bunch of those places I can visit without a car, and I never do, because they are all small, and don't have the selection I want. The few I do visit are more expensive than they should be because their rent is very high.

So I drive about 10 minutes and go to the larger stores, the selection is better and the prices are better because the land is not so crowded.

I have family who live in a very dense city without a car - every time I visit they "stock up" and go on multiple car trips with me to visit slightly distant stores to buy all the stuff that is cheaper, or hard to transport without a car.

The car isn't going away because it's simply too useful. No matter how hard you try to make a city that supposedly doesn't need one, the car option is still better.

All of those things would be better able to be done if our streets weren't 50 feet wide on average (or wider) with acres and acres of land given over to parking.

Why do you think “more dense” automatically means “so dense your whole apartment is a bed”?

My house was built around the time the automobile became common, meaning long long long before parking requirements or even driveways and I have a yard… I highly suggest you take a look around - even within the US - at older neighborhoods and see how nice and quaint it can be without loud, smelly, space wasting cars.

The suburbs that you describe are terrible for the environment and are the reason why the US has by far the highest carbon output per capita. Better to have more land for parks and nature rather than desolate grassy lawns everywhere.

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