Friday, February 04, 2011

Parking Hell

While often people think I'm writing about giant skyscrapers when I use the word "urban," I'm really just mostly talking about development which is at least somewhat pedestrian friendly and not quite entirely car-centric. There are a lot of places in this country that started out as "nice suburbs" in the way that people envisioned them and then grew to be too-dense-but-not-quite-dense enough, in that they're pretty choked with traffic and lack the free infinite parking that people expect but which are not really walkable for most people. Often there's an unwillingness to go one way or another, to start throwing up parking garages at great expense or to start trying to maximize the potential benefits of density.