Making space for storing large metal boxes is no longer mandatory.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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    4 days ago

    I don’t get why laws like that are a thing at all. This is a near perfect example of something better sorted out by the free market instead of government regulation. Some people want a house or apartment with a parking spot, other people don’t need it, so a free market system ought to cause both kinds of housing to be built as there is demand.

    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      There isn’t a free market. Regulation is the only thing that can make capitalism safe and productive for society, as this counters the negative effects of prioritizing money over anything else. If the people of Chicago want to take care of each other better, this is a fantastic way to do so, and it should be supported and emulated.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      the answer is most likely lobbying. induced demand is a thing and car companies know it. I’d be shocked if these laws weren’t originally written by a car company representative.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 days ago

        That and the HOA / NIMBY crowd.

        They hate affordable housing.

        That means they make less money.

        That means their property values go down if housing is just generally cheaper.

        Thus, anything, literally anything that lowers construction costs is opposed by them.

        They climbed the ladder over the wall, then they built the wall higher, and took away the ladder.

        They will fight for every single possible, arbitrary costly thing that can be tacked on to make a ‘bare minimum viable housing unit’ as expensive as possible, because they are directly financially incentivized to do so, vis a vis their own wealth being reliant on property values never ever going down, in real or nominal or relative terms.

        No public transit, no bike lanes, no rent a bike/scooters, no tax breaks nor subsidy programs for renters at anywhere near the scope and magnitude offered to homeowners, no solutions for food deserts, no tenants rights, no goddamned nothing that in a direct or indirect way might make their next home value on appraisal go up by too little, or their property taxes go up by too much.

        They are demons, they want you to be broke and suffer so they can be rich and lazy, and they will lie to your face about this being their motivatiom, and they will hire others to do so.

        Landowners vs non-landowners, tale as old as time, just looks a bit different in our particular setting.

        • FearMeAndDecay@literature.cafe
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          4 days ago

          They can charge more for the place if it has a parking garage or lot with it. It’s like how I was looking to buy a laptop recently and a bunch of them came with a wireless mouse or a year long subscription for Microsoft office. I didn’t want or need those things, but they bundle them into the laptop so they can say “look at all the stuff you’re getting! Give us more money for this stuff you don’t want!” The parking availability makes the property more valuable technically, so they can charge more for renting or buying

          • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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            4 days ago

            When I was looking for an apartment, one apartment I was considering came with a parking space, and they explicitly told me that if I didn’t need a parking space, I could rent it out to someone else. I probably would have done that if I had ended up moving there (which I didn’t, for a different reason). Not sure if that is a thing in many places.

        • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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          4 days ago

          If entire society is conditioned to need a car, then that is not the battle the builders fight.

          • @humanspiral @schnurrito The entire society is not conditioned to need a car. In many large US cities, particularly those that were built mostly before freeways and minimum parking requirements, around 30% of households don’t own cars. A massive PR campaign by the auto industry, combined with classism and racism, has convinced much of the middle class that everyone needs a car, but statistically that belief is not supported. Even in rural areas about 7% of households are carless.

    • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      It’s also an important thing for price discovery. As it stands few of these municipalities have any idea how much a parking spot is worth vs how much it costs.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      They build some not-so-affordable apartments near my friend’s house that has a parking garage underneath and is a short walk from mass transit. But the parking garage isn’t included in rent, so everyone was parking on the street until the town started ticketing people who parked in front of houses they didn’t own.

      Even in this case, people are too stupid or selfish for the “free market” to work properly. Personally, I don’t see an issue with forcing apartments to have a parking garage underneath, even if it’s just for bikes and scooters.

      • MintyFresh@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Because parking spaces in a garage can cost nearly as much to construct as the apartment itself. If we want plentiful, affordable housing we’ve got to loosen the grip on parking regs a bit

        A bike room in place of a ramp is a good idea though

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Tragedy of the Commons.

          There was not “plenty” of parking. That’s why the town had to step in and start enforcing the parking rules that were ignore before.

          • pc486@sh.itjust.works
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            4 days ago

            Tragedy of the commons doesn’t apply to parking because the parking still exists after exploitation. The public utility must degrade (the parking spots disappear after using them) for the tragedy of the commons to apply.

            DrunkEgnineer is correct: in a free market with two prices for the same item, the one with the lowest price will be sold first. There was plenty of free on-street parking, so the paid parking was not preferentially picked.

            Parking rules can also be enforced with money and not who owns the private property next to the public property. That is, charge for street parking at the supply-demand equilibrium.

            • PedestrianError :vbus: :nblvt:@towns.gay
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              4 days ago

              @pc486 @Duamerthrax Parking does degrade though. Lots need resurfacing and sometimes stabilization to prevent sinkholes and garages can collapse altogether. We’re already starting to see serious structural problems with decks built in the mid-late 20th century that are buckling from a combination of age, lack of maintenance, and not anticipating that they’d be filled with oversized SUVs and pickup trucks, many with electric batteries making them even heavier.

              • pc486@sh.itjust.works
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                4 days ago

                Parking is not a finite and limited resource. Road surfaces can, and regularly are, refurbished and established. That’s why parking is not a tragedy; it’s not a resource that is lost forever.

                I think you do bring up a good point though: who pays for parking lots and street parking when it does need help? Is it only the home owner in front of the street or is it a general fund expense from local sales taxes? Double points if you can answer who is then allowed to park in that publicly-paid parking spot.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  4 days ago

                  Parking is not an unlimited and infinite resource? Every parking space is lost walking space, green space, or construction space.

    • HubertManne@piefed.social
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      4 days ago

      I would like to see a law allowing parking in a residential building to be used as storage with maybe a container requirement and allowing for the parking of any vehicle. Many places won’t allow bikes to be parked in the spot by the owner. which is bs.

    • x00z@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Well, now the requirement is no more. So I guess they think the same as you.

    • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I think a city has a right to zone this way. Building parking means cars come. The city is encouraging different means of transportation by limiting the cars coming in. They’re not saying you, Joe Apartment Renter, can’t bring your car; just that you won’t have a spot to park in, and you’ll have to go on the hunt every night when you get home. So it’s basically discouraging folks who require a car from choosing to live here.

      • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 days ago

        Of course, I agree with you. I owned a car for some years (don’t anymore) and didn’t have a parking spot on the grounds of my apartment building at the time, I always needed to find a parking space on a public street (usually didn’t take long, I usually managed to park next to the block I live in).

  • HiramFromTheChi@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Things that are good:

    • Density
    • Micromobility
    • Cleaner air
    • Less noise
    • Less traffic
    • Eliminating pedestrian/bike/scooter deaths
    • More public transport
    • More safety
  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    This is massive boost to urban density, and therefore affordable housing. A driveway + garage is a massive square footage ($$$) sink that is not needed for most people when micromobility is sufficient to get anywhere, and density means more walkable destinations as well. Montreal island is denser than most places, and car sharing extremely popular there. Robotaxi future also means less individual cars.

  • Kresten@feddit.dk
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    4 days ago

    But wasn’t the point of having parking lots there, to allow people who have cars to still use trains?

    • yessikg@fedia.io
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      4 days ago

      No, that’s only the case on the outskirts of the city, for the people coming out of the city to park and take the train into the city

    • Kühlschrank@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yeah I have mixed feelings about this too. I hope they have data to show that that is not necessary. If I were in charge I’d have large parking structures around the perimeter of the transit network so people can get to it from outside of town and are able to use it easily without the friction of finding a spot. That way more people can get to it and use it but fewer people need cars within it.

      • @makyo @kresten The “data” used to create most residential parking mandates was collected in car-dependent suburban areas and is completely inappropriate for application to dense urban apartment buildings near transit where many residents don’t own cars. Eliminating the costly mandate to construct parking that often goes unused on valuable land only restores choice. A developer isn’t prohibited from building as much parking as their market research tells them they can profitably sell or lease.

      • Taldan@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Read the article. This is about housing near transit. What use case would there be for a park-and-ride at their home? Are they supposed to be driving from their door to the far side of the parking lot?

        It’s also a bureaucratic change rather than functional. It used to be a permit you’d have to apply for, which added costs. Now it’s just not required to build parking within a 5 minute walk of transit

        • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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          4 days ago

          Micromobility means the mandate shouldn’t exist anywhere. If I don’t need/want a car, I should be able to find a house where the land/built area includes more space that I do want.

          • PedestrianError :vbus: :nblvt:@towns.gay
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            4 days ago

            @humanspiral @Taldan Micromobility has little to do with it. There always have been large numbers of people in cities who get around by walking, transit, and sometimes their own bicycle. Policies decided largely by suburbanites and influenced by the fossil fuel and oil lobbies have long sought to chip away at our ability to travel freely without consuming their products. Some of the tech disrupters have made it trendier for yuppies to ditch cars, but they haven’t significantly changed modeshare.

            • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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              4 days ago

              I get the lobbying source responsible for past policies. Future trends means density can be increased without space for 1 car per family, but still let people who want a car find such housing. Builders have the choice to ignore or see the future.

              3-5 story “single house wide” multiplexes is affordable density compared to skyscrapers that need expensive elevators and underground multi story garage support structures. Though it is car culture/mandates that makes such affordable density impossible.

  • Donjamos@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    They should couple this with the requirement to give prove of having a designated parking spot for their car. Be it a rented one or a garage on their property or whatever. You don’t have your own parking spot? No car for you.