Say It Ain't So, Joe
I picked up a copy of the March edition of Seattle Magazine the other day, and happened across an article (print only, I'm afraid) by the estimable Joe Follansbee. The article claims that Seattle suffers from an inferiority complex: whenever Seattle residents compare their home town with Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, BC, they always decide that Seattle comes up short. Follansbee argues that Seattle should just learn to love itself just as it is, rather than falling victim to sibling rivalry.
Interesting enough idea. But there's one thing that sticks in my craw: in trying to puncture the reputation of neighboring cities, Follansbee claims that Portland has an unusally low number of children, compared with its neighboring metropolises:
Portland's downtown Pearl Distirct, hailed as the embodiment of "smart growth"...had only three more children living there in 2000 than in 1990, according to demographers. What's "smart" about a city without children?
Do we [i.e., Seattle] want to be like Portland, childless and..."proper"?
Enough already! This factoid--that Portland is devoid of tykes--is simply false. It doesn't even pass the 5 minute Google test; that is, it takes less than five minutes of web searching to see that it doesn't hold water. And yet, it's a theme I hear again and again in discussions of Portland and smart growth generally.
It's high time to roast this chestnut.
Parking Paradigm Shift?
Editor’s note: This post was contributed by Todd Litman, author of “Parking Management Best Practices," and founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute. For more information see his free summary report (pdf), Parking Management: Strategies, Evaluation and Planning.
A great example of the maxim “no free lunch” is the common struggle over parking. Motorists often assume that parking should be abundant and free at nearly every destination, and any deviation from this is considered a problem that must be solved by developers (who are forced to construct ever larger parking facilities when building or upgrading buildings) and governments (who are forced to provide subsidized public parking).
But—as noted in these three recent Planetizen op-eds (and previously in this blog), none of this parking is really free. We all pay double through higher rents, higher prices, higher taxes, increased traffic problems and sprawl. These practices are also inequitable since they force non-drivers to subsidize parking costs, reduce travel options for non-drivers, and reduce housing affordability.
The good news is that a fundamental shift in parking planning is gaining momentum. Communities and planners are beginning to adopt the “no free lunch” approach to parking. They’re developing policies and programs—called parking management--that use parking resources more efficiently. And they’re reaping benefits ranging from more-vibrant downtowns to more-affordable housing to a greater variety of transit options.
Here are some examples of successful programs.
