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Comment by robertclaus | Hacker News Reader

"Buffalo, like many other cities, let builders request special permission to deviate from city-determined parking ratios."

Having an exception process seems like a very logical approach to rolling back parking mandates gradually. I've seen both massive lots with no cars (clearly an outdated mandate in effect) as well as brand new suburban neighborhoods inundated with packed street parking (clearly a miss by the builder). It feels to me like rolling these rules back thoughtfully will be important to avoid companies from dropping parking from new low income housing that may legitimately need it.

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Most cities have had parking minimums for a while, so any new housing without parking is competing against existing housing with the imposed parking ratio.

Meaning, if you are shopping around for housing, you can choose housing with more parking. Which means that to compete with it, housing with less parking will have to compete in other ways, like, say, lower prices. Which is more important than automobile storage in a lot of places with a housing shortage and the consequent skyrocketing prices.

I wrote up something using that corny professor and the rocks analogy: https://bendyimby.com/2022/05/11/cities-are-for-people/

I heard a slightly different version of the jar story in which after the sand, the professor pours a beer into the jar, then the rest of the analogy is the same until the end when a student asks what the beer is supposed to represent, to which the professor says "That just shows that no matter how busy your life is, there's always time for a beer"

Having an exception process is ripe for abuse. We have laws for a reason: it is generally a good thing for the same rules to apply to everyone. When you require an exception, you can easily threaten and extort whatever you want, because the "default" is to deny an exception to a rule. We see this all the time with planning: planning commissions extract expensive "concessions" from developers all the time. "Oh, you technically can build that much, but it won't be profitable with all that parking we mandate. We'll gladly grant an exception, if only you capped heights, and have fewer studios."

Suburbs naturally need more parking, since they tend to be both further from mass transit and larger units.

Suburbs don't have this problem, there is plenty of parking automatically since people have more space there.

I've started to notice that all the car problems are just in dense cities: Nowhere for kids to play, noise, lack of parking, cost, safety, etc etc.

None of those issues exist in suburbs and rural.

(PS. They don't need more parking just because they have larger units.)

Once the city is dense enough then it's all mass transit. If it's not dense you use cars and there is no trouble with them. It's those cities right in the middle that have all the problems.

Sadly current rules make it hard to transition from low to high density

Why would you want to? The people in low density like it that way, and the people in high density like it that way. It's a good thing that it's hard to change the city from under them!

Leave the density alone and let people move to whichever they like better.

Just be extra cautious about the medium density cities.

Who pays for low density? https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/4/1/heres-the-real-...

There are lot of people in low density who would _like_ to be in high density. However, these places are absurdly expensive (despite often being more efficient and cheaper to provide with services) because they've been illegal to build for 70 years, so the stock has been stagnant or declined while the population has grown.

Suburbs definitely have car problems, just not parking. Can't afford a car? A kid trying to get to a friend's house? Anyone trying to walk or bike anywhere? Traffic jams? Car deaths and accidents? Architecture centered around parking lots? Runoff filled with tire and brake runoff? Wildlife deaths and habitat destruction? Climate change? A massive military budget to ensure cheap oil prices?

Suburbs are built on externalities.

> Can't afford a car?

Cars are not that expensive.

> A kid trying to get to a friend's house?

Hardly a problem - just bike there. Just how far apart do you think the houses are?

> Anyone trying to walk or bike anywhere?

It's wonderful!! Have you ever actually been in one? There's basically no traffic, you have lovely quiet streets.

> Traffic jams?

Non-existent.

> Car deaths and accidents?

Very very few, it's just not that dense, so the accident rates are dramatically lower.

> Architecture centered around parking lots?

That's cities, not suburbs.

> Runoff filled with tire and brake runoff?

Again, that's cities, not suburbs. Suburbs don't have much car traffic.

> Wildlife deaths and habitat destruction?

Almost none - the houses are embedded in nature.

> Climate change?

Cities cause much more of that.

> A massive military budget to ensure cheap oil prices?

Yah, that's not what it's for. And cheap energy is used for a lot more than transportation.

> Suburbs are built on externalities.

You talk like someone who's never actually lived in one.

How's the job situation in the suburbs?

That’s a location, industry, and categorization of urban/suburban/exurban/rural discussion. And things can change over time. In the late 90s for example almost all of the tech jobs around Boston were in the suburbs and many still are outside of the outposts of west coast companies.

"suburban neighborhoods inundated with packed street parking (clearly a miss by the builder)."

That seems like a miss by the city planners, not the builder.

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