The Economics of Downtown Parking as a Competing Land Use The Emergence of a New Parking Algorithm

DOI: 10.5176/2425-0112_UPPD15.18

Authors: Bruce Frankel

Abstract:With the seminal work of Donald Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking, planners and land developers have increasingly considered both the imperatives of parking and its alternatives. Downtown parking, with its premium on land value, presents a parking ratio of car space to human space that approaches 1.0. While parking is considered essential to other land uses it, per se, conveys highly subordinate economics by way of direct owner revenue, private economic employment and income, and fiscal impact relative to “productive land uses,” adds significantly to development costs, and competes mightily for land consumption. All of that is about to change starting in five years and maturing in less than twenty with the advent of the self-driven car. The paper demonstrates the sustainable financing of decked parking, both above and especially underground. We then demonstrate a new land use paradigm for the downtown that largely abandons parking for the self-driven car, and its positive effects on land use and the local economies, both private and public, and, on the other hand, the strain it may place on roadways and fuel consumption/ carbon emissions from increased traffic that less often parks and stands still.

Keywords: Parking algorithm, downtown land use, self-driven cars, traffic impact, level of service.