In Atlanta, It’s More Complicated Than Trees Versus Developers (Buckhead: sales, purchaser)

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Exactly.

I'm fine with restaurants and the like not providing parking, but in that the case they need to verify that they are not bringing employees and customers with cars who will spill out into the neighborhood.

Yes. How dare those tax paying businesses full of tax paying patrons use roads maintained with tax-payer dollars. What a horrible thing to have happen.

Street parking should be for the public. It is a public street after all. If you want guaranteed room to park your personal vehicles, then do so on your own property. We wouldn't tolerate someone demanding a guarantee for storing their private property in any other public space, why are neighborhood roads suddenly special?

[Forhall]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Exactly.

I'm fine with restaurants and the like not providing parking, but in that the case they need to verify that they are not bringing employees and customers with cars who will spill out into the neighborhood.

Almost every truly urban area in the world, including in the US, deals with street parking. That's life in a dense city. If you want every business and house to have their own dedicated parking lot, live in the suburbs. Parking lots are ruining the city. It effectively doubles the footprint of a development for some asphalt.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by Forhall

Almost every truly urban area in the world, including in the US, deals with street parking. That's life in a dense city. If you want every business and house to have their own dedicated parking lot, live in the suburbs. Parking lots are ruining the city. It effectively doubles the footprint of a development for some asphalt.

Almost every truly urban area in the world has a transit system worth a crap so that people can get places without their cars in a reasonable amount of time. Atlanta does not have that. Not even close. NO...MARTA is not very useful for a vast majority of the city, and almost useless to the metro as a whole.

You people keep wanting to bring an extra million people here and plop them anywhere and everywhere around the city, but haven't thought for a second what that will do if we do not beef up our transit first to prepare for it. A million people with little way to get anywhere would be a disaster. And no, sorry....not even an appreciable fraction of those million people would be living, working, and playing within a walkable distance of their shoebox-sized apartment. That's pure fantasy.

Until then, you need places to park. That's life in a transit-poor city.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by Forhall

Almost every truly urban area in the world, including in the US, deals with street parking. That's life in a dense city. If you want every business and house to have their own dedicated parking lot, live in the suburbs. Parking lots are ruining the city. It effectively doubles the footprint of a development for some asphalt.

Why not do shared parking or put it underground? We should insist on quality development that addresses the reality of how people get around in this city.

Enough with the el cheapo projects that use asphalt surface lots, or that have no parking at all and simply dump their tenants/customers onto the community at large.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

Almost every truly urban area in the world has a transit system worth a crap so that people can get places without their cars in a reasonable amount of time. Atlanta does not have that. Not even close. NO...MARTA is not very useful for a vast majority of the city, and almost useless to the metro as a whole.

You people keep wanting to bring an extra million people here and plop them anywhere and everywhere around the city, but haven't thought for a second what that will do if we do not beef up our transit first to prepare for it. A million people with little way to get anywhere would be a disaster. And no, sorry....not even an appreciable fraction of those million people would be living, working, and playing within a walkable distance of their shoebox-sized apartment. That's pure fantasy.

Until then, you need places to park. That's life in a transit-poor city.

You keep thinking all these people will just show up all at once, and that all the things that would enable us to handle them would just spontaneously occur, rather than happen over the three decades that the growth is expected to stretch over.

Yes we need transit, but it is NOT an either / or scenario. They CAN happen at the same time.

Don't act like those who want to enable increased density aren't also the ones who've been pushing for increased transit.

Originally Posted by arjay57

Why not do shared parking or put it underground? We should insist on quality development that addresses the reality of how people get around in this city.

Enough with the el cheapo projects that use asphalt surface lots, or that have no parking at all and simply dump their tenants/customers onto the community at large.

If you make development expensive to build, all that gets built is expensive development.

How about we allow people to legally build lives that don't require cars at all, and let developers decide how much they want to spend based on the market for parking?

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

If you make development expensive to build, all that gets built is expensive development.

Assuming there continues to be heavy demand for these more expensive projects, then it is likely developers will keep building them. If they are making big profits, they should be required to spend a few shekels on high quality parking solutions.

How about we allow people to legally build lives that don't require cars at all, and let developers decide how much they want to spend based on the market for parking?

It would be nice to see developers (or individuals) get started on some of those prime 2,600 acres that have been identified by the city within a few minutes walk of existing heavy rail transit stations. They might be able build TOD with little or no parking, on the assumption that the residents and their visitors would take mass transit and not have cars.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Assuming there continues to be heavy demand for these more expensive projects, then it is likely developers will keep building them. If they are making big profits, they should be required to spend a few shekels on high quality parking solutions.

No. No they shouldn't. If the market can support a lack of parking, then they shouldn't be mandated to build any parking what so ever.

[/quote]It would be nice to see developers (or individuals) get started on some of those prime 2,600 acres that have been identified by the city within a few minutes walk of existing heavy rail transit stations. They might be able build TOD with little or no parking, on the assumption that the residents and their visitors would take mass transit and not have cars.[/quote]

You mean those that I've already shown can not feasibly meet housing demand on their own, and which have TODs in the works in many cases? Oh, and where they don't, it's generally too expensive to build a development to be profitable given the income levels who would choose to live there?

Those sites? Sure, let's make them feasible to build near. While we're at it, let's not discriminate in a way that perpetuates our housing shortage by creating widely applied allowances for no parking minimums amungst other things.

[jsvh]

If you don't like looking out your window and seeing cars parked on the public street you need to get the rules change to prohibit parking there, not force your neighbors to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to house cars.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

No. No they shouldn't. If the market can support a lack of parking, then they shouldn't be mandated to build any parking what so ever.

I'm referring to high end projects where the developers know their purchasers are going to demand parking. How many people are going to plunk down $2 million for a Midtown or Buckhead condo without a place to park their cars?

My point is that in these situations developers should not be allowed to get away with inexpensive surface lots. These are deluxe projects that produce huge profits and the city should require underground or other urban parking solutions.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by arjay57

How many people are going to plunk down $2 million for a Midtown or Buckhead condo without a place to park their cars?

Arjay, we don't have laws mandating toilet paper in bathrooms yet it is there. We don't need laws forcing parking on people. If the people really want it and it is worth the costs, it will get built on it's own without the government forcing you to do it by law.