Attractive Parking Garages

Keith Schneider, Michigan Land Use Institute: Winning Downtowns Stack Their Decks: The age of attractive parking structures has arrived.

This article talks about the growing trend of making parking garages attractive, mixed use structures. David Sucher talks about making parking an integral part of your urban fabric, because cars aren't going anywhere. You need to make them less destructive. I think the trend towards attractive parking structures is a big step forward towards solving cities' parking problems.

For example, the parking/traffic situation in Uptown is pretty bad. I think Uptown needs to reduce the amount of surface parking available to non-residents to keep traffic off residential side streets by developing a municipal or private ramp from which developers can "buy" or "trade" parking stops. This would enable denser development in a more pedestrian- and neighborhood-friendly way.

I would've liked to see some discussion of automatic parking ramps, which are able to pack even more cars into the same space. Robotic Parking is one US vendor that builds these structure. They're more popular in Europe, where space is at a premium.

(Via Planetizen)