Reddit mentions: The best landscape architecture books

We found 257 Reddit comments discussing the best landscape architecture books. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 76 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

1. The High Cost of Free Parking, Updated Edition

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2. The High Cost of Free Parking

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3. Illustrated History of Landscape Design

Illustrated History of Landscape Design
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4. Design with Nature

Design with Nature
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5. The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles

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6. Landscape Planning: Environmental Applications

Landscape Planning: Environmental Applications
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7. Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change

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Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change
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9. With People in Mind: Design And Management Of Everyday Nature

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With People in Mind: Design And Management Of Everyday Nature
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10. Landscape Architect's Portable Handbook

Landscape Architect's Portable Handbook
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11. The World Heritage of Gardens

The World Heritage of Gardens
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13. Caves in Context: The Cultural Significance of Caves and Rockshelters in Europe

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Caves in Context: The Cultural Significance of Caves and Rockshelters in Europe
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14. Landscapes of Privilege: The Politics of the Aesthetic in an American Suburb

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Release dateNovember 2003
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15. Urban Development: The Logic Of Making Plans

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16. Landscape Architectural Graphic Standards

Landscape Architectural Graphic Standards
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17. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments (Explorations in Anthropology)

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A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments (Explorations in Anthropology)
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Release dateJanuary 1997
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18. The Experience of Landscape

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19. Native Landscaping From El Paso to L.A.

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20. Intermodal Freight Transport

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Intermodal Freight Transport
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🎓 Reddit experts on landscape architecture books

The comments and opinions expressed on this page are written exclusively by redditors. To provide you with the most relevant data, we sourced opinions from the most knowledgeable Reddit users based the total number of upvotes and downvotes received across comments on subreddits where landscape architecture books are discussed. For your reference and for the sake of transparency, here are the specialists whose opinions mattered the most in our ranking.
Total score: 62
Number of comments: 4
Relevant subreddits: 1
Total score: 35
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Total score: 34
Number of comments: 5
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Total score: 16
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Number of comments: 5
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Total score: 10
Number of comments: 3
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Total score: 6
Number of comments: 4
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Number of comments: 6
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Total score: 4
Number of comments: 4
Relevant subreddits: 2
Total score: 3
Number of comments: 3
Relevant subreddits: 1

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Top Reddit comments about Landscape Architecture:

u/Rudiger · 9 pointsr/vancouver

Dear Mr. Lapointe,

Thank you for taking the time for answering questions in this AMA. My question goes to the recent NPA proposal to make metered street parking outside the downtown core free on Sundays and statutory holidays. I apologize in advance, but this post may get a bit long, but it is an important issue and I am interested in learning about your policy rationale and some background I feel is necessary.

I am curious, in coming to this decision, have you, or your policy team, read The High Cost of Free Parking? The author of this book is none other than one Donald Shoup. Dr. Shoup is a professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners, and has served as Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA.

If you haven’t read this book (admittedly it is 800 pages long, although it is currently the bible in the parking and urban planning world), have you, or you policy team, listened to the podcast on this subject by Freakonomics? And, if you still haven’t listened to a 30 minute podcast on this extremely important issue, have you at least read this op-ed in the New York Times by Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics at George Mason University?

If the answer is no, let me provide you with a brief synopsis of what the most prominent experts in the subject say.

Currently, the cost of parking in North America is grossly underpriced. As I am sure you understand, nothing in life is free, including parking. Not only are their costs to build, pave and maintain parking spots. But more importantly, there is the opportunity cost of parking. We are using a valuable limited resource, urban land space, for parking rather than other possible uses (car lanes, bike lanes, pop parks, land development for housing, commercial uses etc..). In fact according to the NYT articles, the average cost of a parking space in LA, a place not known for limited supply, is $31,000 per spot when taking into account maintenance and land costs. That is more than the actual cost of most cars parked in the spots. If we don’t give people free cars, why should we give them so called “free” parking?

Additionally, the negative consequences of “free parking” are profound. According to Dr. Shoup, “A surprising amount of traffic isn’t caused by people who are on their way somewhere. Rather it is caused by people who have already arrived. Our streets are congested, in part, by people who have gotten where they want to be but are cruising around looking for a place to park” Actually between 30-45% of congestion is people simply looking for parking in some areas. So by underpricing street parking, you not only giving a subsidy to cars and encouraging driving (while discouraging other possible uses for the land space), but also this will further encourage drivers to continuously circle the block looking for underpriced parking further increasing road congestion.

So it light of the above, my questions are as follows:

  • Have you or your policy team read The High Cost of Free Parking in coming to this decision?

  • Do you deny Dr. Shoup's and Dr. Cowen's thesis that underpriced parking is a subsidy for drivers that encourages driving? If so, why? If not, why do you support further underpricing parking?

  • Can you please defend your position against Dr. Shoup’s thesis that cities must properly price parking to reflect its true costs to efficiently allocate a limited valuable resource, urban land space, among various possible uses?

  • What studies lead you to suggest that the proper price for parking outside of the downtown core is free after 8pm, on Sundays and on statutory holidays?

  • If you believe, the market price outside of the downtown core is not free after 8pm, on Sundays and on statutory holidays, why do you support giving a subsidy to drivers for free parking rather than a subsidy for other possible users of the space (such as for drivers for another car lane, cyclist for another bike path, people for a pop up park, residents for more land for housing or businesses for more land for commercial development, etc…)?

  • How will you make up the lost revenue from this policy proposal? (I would prefer specifics over generalities)

  • In light of the above, do you still stand by this position?

  • If you do still stand by this position, why do you support shifting the true costs of parking from drivers who park in those spots to other people, residents and businesses of the City of Vancouver.

    Also, I posted a very similar post on your blog and you never answered or defended you policy rationale. Hopefully you can do so here
u/soapdealer · 55 pointsr/SimCity

I totally love the Christopher Alexander books. Definitely check out his The Timeless Way of Building which is a great companion piece to A Pattern Language. You should know that his works, while great in my opinion, are sort of considered idiosyncratic and not really in the mainstream of architecture/urban design.

Here's a short reading list you should look at:

The Smart Growth Manual and Suburban Nation by Andres Duany & Jeff Speck. Another set of sort-of-companion works, the Manual has a concrete set of recommendations inspired by the critique of modern town planning in Suburban Nation and might be more useful for your purposes.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs is probably the most famous and influential book on city planning ever and contains a lot of really original and thoughtful insights on cities. Despite being over half-a-century old it feels very contemporary and relevant.

The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler is similarly mostly a critique of modernist planning principles but is both short and very well written so I'd definitely recommend checking it out.

Makeshift Metropolis by Witold Rybczynski: I can't recommend this entire book, but it does contain (in my opinion) the best summary of the history of American urban planning. Really useful for a historical perspective on different schools of thought in city design over the years.

The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup is the book on parking policy. It's huge (700+ pages) and very thorough and academic, so it might be harder to get through than the other, more popular-audience-oriented titles on the list, but if you want to include parking as a gameplay element, I really can't recommend it highly enough. It's a problem that's thorny enough most city games just ignore it entirely: Simcity2013's developers say they abandoned it after realizing it would mean most of their players' cities would be covered in parking lots, ignoring that most actual American cities are indeed covered in parking lots.

Finally there's a bunch of great blogs/websites out there you should check out: Streetsblog is definitely a giant in transportation/design blogging and has a really capable team of journalists and a staggering amount of content. Chuck Marohn's Strong Towns blog and Podcast are a great source for thinking about these issues more in terms of smaller towns and municipalities (in contrast to Streetsblog's focus on major metropolitan areas). The Sightline Daily's blog does amazing planning/transpo coverage of the Pacific Northwest. Finally [The Atlantic Cities] (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/) blog has incredible coverage on city-issues around the world.

I hope this was helpful and not overwhelming. It's a pretty big (and in my opinion, interesting) topic, so there's a lot of ground to cover even in an introductory sense.

u/cinemabaroque · 5 pointsr/urbanplanning

Well, governments sort of do already, but not anywhere near the scale of the subsidies that are given to drivers.

Every car lane on a road that isn't a private toll road is an indirect subsidy for drivers and the frequent mandates that new development contain X amount of free parking spaces. There is a good book on this called The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup and you can read his original paper here for free. Free parking also subsidizes the car experience by taking valuable real-estate and making it free to use by motor vehicles.

If we take into account the subsidies for Oil and Gas Companies that keep the price of gasoline down it emerges that tens to hundreds of billions are being used in the US alone (the article references Australia but I'm more familiar with US statistics) to subsidize driving.

Some cities install bike lanes and bike parking but use a fraction of the resources to do so. Given the long term health benefits of cycling and the ecological impacts of mass driving it makes sense to me to shift some of the massive subsidies already going to drivers to cyclists.

Most cities spend less than 1% of their transit budget on bicycle infrastructure even though a much higher proportion of their population rides a bike regularly or as a commuter.

Given that the US government is willing to subsidize new electric vehicles with multi-thousand dollar tax breaks I see no reason why it should not be possible to write off on one's taxes 25% of the cost of a new bike or some similar scheme.

Alternatively it could set up a system where people who can verify that they bike to work 50% or more of the time receive a $1,000 health tax credit at the end of the year. This would also encourage people to work close to where they live (if your commute is only 2 miles it is a lot easier to achieve this tax credit) which would encourage density.

u/NotALandscaper · 10 pointsr/LandscapeArchitecture

Great question, and great idea! Off the top of my head:


The Basics

Landscape Architect's Portable Handbook - This one does get a bit technical, but it's a good guide.


Sociology/Psychology

Social Life of Small Urban Spaces - Just a good book about how people experience spaces

Design with People in Mind - An older film, but a classic. Funny and with great observations about how people use spaces and interact with their environment


Design Theory

Architecture: Form, Space and Order - This is a great guidebook for architects and landscape architects alike


History of Landscape Architecture

Illustrated History of Landscape Design - A great intro to the history of landscape architecture.


Urban Planning/Design

Death and Life of Great American Cities - It's a classic and should be a required read for anyone in landscape architecture or architecture


This is the short list - I'll add to it as I think of more!

u/_THE_MAD_TITAN · 5 pointsr/politics

Basic macroeconomics tells us that lower interest rates supposedly results in more spending, borrowing, and thus more economic activity and growth.

But there are some glaring holes in the mainstream economic understanding:

(1) After a transition period of a few months, the economy settles into a equilibrium that isn't much better than before the rate change. If the federal funds interbank rate is adjusted downward by only 0.25 percentage points (known as "basis points"), then there's no reason to think such a tiny adjustment will result in a meaningful boost to the economy.

(2) In fact, with baseline interest rates so low, we are in danger of entering a "liquidity trap" in which people don't even bother saving their money or investing it because the rate of return on investments and savings will be so low, the benefit of investing versus spending it today would be much weaker. Less money will be saved for financial emergencies, retirement, college savings, etc now that the benefit of doing so is reduced.

(3) Also, any boost to growth that results from reducing interest rates can only be sustained by continuing to reduce the interest rates over a prolonged period. A one-off decrease by such a small increment simply will not ripple through the economy in a way that people will appreciate.

(4) There is also the reality that simply making debt and other capital cheaper by lowering rates is not going to translate into new innovations, factories, warehouses, product lines or other new products and investments.

If new growth is the goal, we need to stop tinkering with monetary policy and commit to more Keynesian or Georgist macroeconomic fiscal policy:

  • Improve our land use policy.

  • Reduce barriers to entry for upstart minority entrepreneurs.

  • Make college and grad school significantly cheaper or tuition-free.

  • Reform the healthcare and health insurance sector so that employees are not tethered to their current employer due to health insurance.

  • Toughen up our antitrust laws to not have such a narrow definition of "monopoly". Prohibit all exclusive partnerships and other contracts, unless parties to the agreement wish to pay an exclusivity tax.

  • Implement a land value tax, and make federal block grants dependent on states' adoption of land value tax and reduction of income and sales taxes.

  • Implement a carbon tax

  • Implement congestion pricing for major roads and interstates. Incentivize states and cities to abolish free parking and to implement surge pricing and remove the minimum on-site parking requirements in their zoning ordinances.
u/digitalsciguy · 2 pointsr/CitiesSkylines

The angle that us advocates/urban planners are arguing over parking about goes way beyond 'aesthetics', which I sometimes have to remember also includes those tastes that see nothing wrong architecturally, economically, or culturally with parking structures.

Above ground and underground parking in towers are affected by, among other things, off-street parking regulations - whether minimums or maximums - and pseudoscience about how much parking is 'needed' at a site. The reason most of us want it built into the game - rather than simply being satisfied with mods that allow you to plop parking as you please to replicate your own mid-western peak-car American city - is because parking can be used as a subtle hint about the performance of your transportation network and your economy/tax efficiency of the land, in a similar to the appearance of abandoned buildings. It's really hard to encourage people to download a mod that does this and I argue it's a critical lesson in the game, aside and maybe more importantly than a bunch of other niche policies the game teaches you through ordinances.

Parking one of the biggest aspects of car-centric transport planning that we've recently questioned and debunked with with lots of data; it's upending the disciplines of transport planning and development.

So it's not just about the aesthetics of having parking garages to make cities more life-like or a more accurate simulation of where all those cars go when they're standing around doing nothing.

It's more about the fact that the game misses a crucial opportunity to teach just one more subtle but important lesson about the connection between parking (or more accurately, just the right amount of it) and the type of environment that makes a city successful and one that people want to live in. This is a HUGE issue on a daily basis for many professionals and citizens on the front lines - for me personally as I fight with neighbours over reducing parking requirements in buildings so developers can build more units to satisfy the housing crunch in Boston.

Sim City inspired a whole generation of people to become city planners. The next generation of city sim can inspire another generation of lay people to understand more viscerally the problems last generation's city planners left us with... If you want to make your city look like parking-pocked downtown Houston, Indianapolis, or Brasilia, that's great! Power to you. But your city shouldn't perform economically or with the same return on taxes vs city expenses as New York City, San Francisco, or Portland, OR. It's the same lesson that you learn when you put your dirty industrial right next to your residential - your choices make your city that much more or less desirable to live in.

u/Tabeku · 2 pointsr/LandscapeArchitecture

The world heritage of gardens by Dusan Ogrin is a great one. Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/World-Heritage-Gardens-Dusan-Ogrin/dp/0500236666

It takes a historic perspective and goes through all of the important eras of garden design, describing how basic design principles such as contrast, harmony, rythm etc. were used to convey different messages. It won't provide you with any recepies for designing but it is still great to understand historical significance of landscape structures. Highly recommended to anyone dealing with landscape design.

Another one I would recommend, but which is more general is The cultured landscape. https://www.amazon.com/Cultured-Landscape-Designing-Environment-Century/dp/0419250409
This one is a bit more philosophical but great to understand where landscape architecture is moving in general.

Enjoy your reading.

u/mekanicallyseperated · 2 pointsr/whatsthisplant

It's definitely a challenge gardening in the desert and it's what I do for a living! Lots of trial and error still to this day and I've lived in the desert for 10 years now.

Here are some books that I have found very helpful:

Perennials for the Southwest

Native Plants for Southwest Landscapes

Arid Plants for Dry Regions

I used to work in a desert botanic garden nursery and these 3 books were our go to books for reference. Bear in mind that your area can get much colder than the low desert but all these books have plant temperature requirements.

But most importantly have fun getting to know the desert and after time you'll see what a magical place it is. If you have the time I recommend exploring the natural areas by hiking, camping or just doing a bit of road tripping. You'll get lots of inspiration and come to an understanding of how unique all the animals and plants are that have had to adapt to such harsh conditions. Winter is great time to explore. No bugs and all the snakes are sleeping! =)

u/Kresley · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Great! For some reason, I was imagining someone who was just getting interested in those subjects when I was throwing things out. At that level, anything I can think of that you're not already familiar with would not really be 'popular reading' style books, but academic publications, and you already know how to seek those out.

I was thinking mostly about how many economics classes you may have had when I mentioned anything more technical than Natural Capitalism. I think that book would be fine for most people, I just know most Economists would dismiss it as too anecdotal, not enough statistically significant examples.

>I'm a stubborn reader, thus I can chew through most heavy pieces with ease as long as their are not overloaded with numbers and statistics.

Hmmm. I can't really think of more advanced resource economics or environmental engineering books than you've already read that aren't going to be exactly that. Or perhaps it's just that I avoid the ones that are not, as I suspect they must be too agenda driven.

For human development (I have a suspicion we're using the term "human development" differently, but) "Lowly Origin: Where, When, and Why Our Ancestors First Stood Up" by Jonathan Kingdon is interesting.

Oddly, I was just saying on another thread here how we use the same terms to mean different things in different fields. I think I know what you mean by "environmental engineering", in the sense that business and ecology majors may imagine it. But, in the Engineering school, it means something more like 'the wastewater treatment process and stormwater diversion and soil mechanics', and therefore those books are all about explaining the processes very specifically and walking you through the calculations necessary to design the systems. So, very equation heavy, and thus not what I generally recommend to most people who don't have to be designing one.

Have you read through, or seen the lectures of, Architect William McDonough? I'd guess you have, depending on what school you went through. But if not, you should seek those out. I'm just guessing that angle on it may be more what you're looking for than the comparatively uninteresting intro to environmental engineering textbooks I'm thinking of. Those and a bunch of landscape planning ones, like this one, which you may have already had in class.

Beak of the Finch, I guess, but that's pretty basic.

Nature's Numbers perhaps, but it needs some updating.

For self-sustainment, maybe "EcoVillage at Ithaca: Pioneering a Sustainable Culture"? I'm trying to think of ones that don't require the common structural engineering core sequence of classes as a background, and struggling.

Seeing an old Joel Achenbach article yesterday reminded me of how I used to appreciate how his, and David Quammen's, articles/writings would start out being about a particular subject, but end up touching at least a bit on the pitfalls of for- and not-for-profit organizations trying to work in these areas. That part's interesting and useful to ponder.

u/emtilt · 1 pointr/truegaming

That's a somewhat loose use of the word, but ok. Also, since, like, half the top level posts are asking for clarification about what you're talking about, you may want to improve your original post.

Anyway, this:

>Why does a cave seem to elicit near-identical responses regardless of culture? What cognitive triggers are these designers tripping, and how? Are they doing it deliberately or are they just tapping a rich vein of hard-wired neural responses without understanding how it works?

isn't actually a question about games. It's a question about cultural anthropology or perhaps psychology. Nor is it a given that your assertion that "a cave seem[s] to elicit near-identical responses regardless of culture," is actually true. Perhaps you should begin with a book that looks at it from a cave studies perspective. Caves also occur symbolically in Jungian psychology, but you can probably trace it through a variety of other works, including mythic use (or, more generally, underworlds).

u/J_Chen_ladesign · 2 pointsr/LandscapeArchitecture

https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-History-Landscape-Design-Elizabeth/dp/0470289333

This book could be used for citation.

There is a section covering the Medieval period. I don't know what makes a monastic garden different from the kitchen/herb gardens of a castle/estate manor during that time, but they seemed to be mostly walled in and with practical use instead of for aesthetic purposes. This is in contrast to the Enlightenment's monumental palace gardens. And further on, geometry fell out of fashion with the rise of Romantic Naturalism in the 18th century.

I think the herb knot gardens in fashion during the Medieval period informed the Victorian annual bedding practices or even the hedge mazes that emerged. This is just personal speculation, however.

There is a clear connection between the geometric and regular layout of (because of the wall boundaries) of these older gardens and the impressive layouts of the gardens of Notre for Versailles, though. They were artificial on purpose and followed the philosophy of hierarchical order with Man above everything, but under God. Bushes and trees weren't left to themselves if they could be turned into topiaries, pleached, pollarded, etc. They were in regimented rows and expressed wealth from the amount of hired help required to maintain them.

u/elbac14 · 2 pointsr/urbanplanning

You have very valid points but it isn't just the free market controlling this. If I can give you one great example, you might enjoy reading The High Cost of Free Parking. All cities require developers to provide huge amounts of free parking for all development. The free market (developers) actually doesn't want all this parking because the cost of building just one parking space is over $10,000 and over $40,000 if it is underground. However cities (planning and engineering departments) are forcing them to do it. In turn, all this at-grade parking (typically only high-rise building's parking is underground) causes more land to be wasted and in turn contributes to urban sprawl.

u/doebedoe · 2 pointsr/AskSocialScience

Which are the last two? Assuming capitalist development and codes...

By far the most famous geographer studying global capitalism is David Harvey. He recently wrote The Enigma of Capital which is a pretty easy introduction to his work. I think his Spaces of Global Capitalism is a more useful summation. He's very famous for a few other books, but I think the most important work he's done is in The Limits to Capital. The last one is a tough, meticulous book. Also worth checking out is his protege Neil Smith, either his Uneven Development or for a focus on cities The New Urban Frontier.

There really are not many books that take up housing and building code specifically, though Ben-Joseph's The City of Code is a useful introduction. If you're looking for a good rant (and a reliable one) on how we got to the less-than-stellar spatial arrangements of American cities, James Howard Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere will get your blood pumping. If you're more interested in the cultural politics of place, one of my all time favorites is Landscapes of Privilege by the Duncan's.

u/puck2 · 1 pointr/providence

George Costanza, the quintessential New Yorker, once said, "My father didn't pay for parking, my mother, my brother, nobody. It's like going to a prostitute. Why should I pay when, if I apply myself, maybe I can get it for free?" The High Cost of Free Parking, Donald Shoup's 733-page tour de force, has the answer. With the exception of a Monopoly board, there is no such thing as free parking. In fact, free parking turns out to be the biggest problem you never thought about. "We all want to park free," Shoup writes. "But we also want to reduce traffic congestion, energy consumption and air pollution. We want affordable housing, efficient transportation, green space, good urban design, great cities and a healthy economy. Unfortunately, ample free parking conflicts with all these other goals."

u/zecho · 5 pointsr/fargo

I don't really care about building a tower. Kilbourne Group can do whatever they want. My concern is that building the tower hinges on the city building a ramp and plaza for the tower, which goes above and beyond economic incentives given to other business development. There ought to be a level playing field for developers throughout the city of Fargo. I don't see any reason why Kilbourne Group should get special treatment.

Secondly, parking ramps tend to sit empty when there are free options on the street, even if those ramps are also free (count cars inside and outside the Island Park or City-owned ramp sometime). I know it sounds counterintuitive but there are books about this sort of thing. Unless the ramp is free, people will continue to use on street parking instead, which adds to congestion and noise. If the city wants to encourage use, and help pay for the maintenance and, ideally, other business improvement districts, they ought to add parking meters downtown and offer a ramp for less in fees or for free.

Edit: I realize that parking meters are currently illegal in ND, which is a dumb law that ought to be changed.

u/kiwipete · 3 pointsr/urbanplanning

In short, no. To be clear, what is presented in the article is nifty and already on course to happen (though maybe not in a single integrated package sold by one vendor). Lots of sensors exist in our urban environment to help with all kinds of tasks (ITS already gives preemption to emergency vehicles; buildings already phone fire events into the the fire department).

This may become a tool that planners (or perhaps more likely civil engineers) use, but it's not urban planning. Planning is both lucky and unlucky in that nobody understands what we do. It's very possible to get a masters degree in planning and still not be able to articulate what urban planning is.

In short, planning exists in the realm of informing hard decisions. Lewis Hopkins considers that planning helps best where decisions are:

  1. interdependent - the decision cannot be made in isolation from other decisions
  2. indivisible - the decision cannot be made in increments (for example, you can't generally build 10% of a bridge and get 10% of people across)
  3. irreversible - you can't simply try different solutions until one works
  4. facing imperfect foresight - if we know exactly what is going to happen, then you hire an engineer not a planner.

    By contrast, Urban OS appears to address a pretty limited set of decisions based on empirical data. That's all well and good, and I generally like models to help inform decisions, but it's still only a small part of planning.
u/alpaca_obsessor · 6 pointsr/WhitePeopleTwitter

I don’t know where the other poster pulled 3600 from, but I still agree with his main argument that parking shouldn’t be subsidized as it’s ridiculously expensive to construct and takes up too much space in our urban areas. If your interested in the topic, there’s plenty of literature on it.

The Hidden Cost of Bundled Parking - Access Magazine

“Unbundling” Parking Costs is a Top Way to Promote Transportation Options - Mobility Lab

Unbundling Parking Isn’t Easy but It’s Worth It - The Greater Margin

The High Cost of Free Parking

u/ArcadeNineFire · 12 pointsr/urbanplanning

This sub can seem overwhelmingly anti-car because, for many, it's a place to vent.

Look at it this way: the dominant public policy in the United States for several generations, stretching back 70+ years, has been to orient nearly every transportation, land use, and development decision around the automobile.

That has resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars (probably trillions, actually) of direct and indirect subsidies promoting car ownership, free and/or cheap car storage (parking), car-oriented residential development (suburban sprawl), and on and on. This in comparison to paltry support for public transportation, dense urban development, etc. Put succinctly, cars and cities are a bad match.

Don't get me wrong: the personal automobile is amazing technology. It makes sense that people have gravitated to it. But the planners of 1940s and 50s – whose system we largely emulate today – simply couldn't (or wouldn't) predict the massive negative side effects that accompany car-oriented development.

These planners thought that cars and suburbs would mean an end to urban gridlock. Instead, they accelerate it. They thought that building highways through urban cores would revitalize them – instead, those highways decimated communities, many of which have never recovered.

In fact, the original Interstate Highways System was supposed to connect cities (great idea!), not go through them (not so great).

For those of us on this sub who follow these trends, and have found that modern research is firmly against much of the so-called benefits of cars, parking lots, and highways, it's immensely frustrating that so much of the public conversation adamantly refuses to recognize the shortcomings of car-oriented development. So yes, you get a lot of "anti-car" sentiment around here, but I think it's more fair to say that we're pro-balance, not anti-car per se.

Cars will continue to make sense for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of trips. What we want to see are more options so that you don't have to drive everywhere, all the time, which is bad for our environmental and physical health, and is economically unsustainable to boot.

As for parking lots specifically, you won't find a better resource than Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking, which is basically the Bible around here (for good reason). I imagine you don't feel like reading a whole book about parking policy (and I wouldn't blame you!), but google the phrase and you'll find plenty of articles about it that get across the main points.

I'd also encourage you to check out the Strong Towns organization, which was started by a (conservative) former traffic engineer in suburban Minnesota (i.e. not your typical member of this sub). They come at these points from a very practical, non-ideological perspective. Here's a good post to start with.

u/iamktothed · 4 pointsr/Design

Interaction Design

u/nickpickles · 3 pointsr/todayilearned

Well, there could be a lot of factors determining sub-par mass transit in an urban area. At the most basic level it could be lack of funding. In WA state we dealt with this over ten years ago with Tim Eyman's I-695 which in my area cut mass transit funding 50%. When you have a group of voters who say "fuck it" to funding bus/light rail you're going to have progressively worse service.

Another aspect is urban congestion. If you are running a bus line without dedicated lanes in a dense downtown region (or the center of an auto-centric sprawl city like Atlanta) it's going to back up and cause delayed routes, more gas consumption, and longer rides. Light rail, commuter rail, and BRT can move faster in most locations but require a larger investment (more money per mile of service, which won't happen if voters turn down taxes and bonds for it). Also factor in the continued sprawling out of cities like Phoenix, which requires more money to service fewer riders due to low density.

It's funny now because many cities are opting to re-implement the trolley lines they so quickly tore up in the 40's/50's/60's, albeit at a cost. When you had cities growing organically with an urban core that included housing followed by streetcar neighborhoods, the transportation system was integrated into the environment (you walked in downtown, took a streetcar to home/visit in the peripheral neighborhoods). The streetcars were tracked and had the right of way. When the cities tore the tracks up and placed their buses within the street traffic, which would become more congested than we could have ever imagined, in many cases we see them giving up a dedicated right of way for transit and forcing their vehicles right into the shark tank, so to say.

The post-war boom that fueled auto production/purchase coupled with the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 swelled the streets with cars and kicked off the suburban sprawl that still persists today (although the numbers have lowered significantly since the 1990's and took a sharp decline since 2008). A few good books on these subjects include: Suburban Nation, The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000, and How Cities Work : Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken Here are a few about specific cities with high amounts of sprawl that go into what factors caused this and the problems faced today: The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles and Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City (which I am reading right now and can say so far is a really interesting history of the city).

u/SimplicityCompass · 3 pointsr/oculus

Thank you.

The featured project really emphasises the advantage to archaeologists and historians in experiencing evidence via VR. Theoretically, the idea of experiencing sites, via "human perception" has been controversial - "too subjective" or "unscientific". But the groundbreaking work of Christopher Tilley: A Phenomenology of Landscape (1994), introducing such concepts into archaeological study, has become more widely accepted.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Phenomenology-Landscape-Monuments-Explorations-Anthropology/dp/1859730760

My own project is very much looking at this aspect of archaeological sites, initially, a neolithic site on the south coast of Britain. So it's great to see other works in progress.

Steve LaValle has an interesting book in progress:

http://msl.cs.uiuc.edu/vr/





u/Alsandr · 1 pointr/bookclub

Design with Nature by Ian McHarg

I started reading this one a while ago, but was sidetracked by life and it sat collecting dust. I just started it again, but haven't gone very far. This book is supposed to be the bible for planners and landscape architects, so I'm excited to get back into it.

I just finished reading Need for the Bike by Paul Fournel. This book is a collection of short stories and musings written by a lifetime cyclist. He does an amazing job conveying feelings associated with biking and I devoured this book much quicker than I expected. My wife bought it for me for Christmas because it was supposed to be similar to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, another book I really enjoyed.

I also finally finished The Landscape of Man, which I had been working through. I still don't see how this one was supposed to impact me as much as others claim it should, but it was an interesting read.

u/beaniebeanbean · 1 pointr/ArtHistory

So glad this is taking off! I just came across a bunch more resources I'd love to share/discuss (including lots of Dutch landscape stuff) -- should we pool all of our contributions into a Google Doc? Maybe a mod can help out with how the best way of going about this is??

Might be a bit off topic, but I keep coming across landscape philosophy texts like Raymond Williams The Country and the City and Jay Appelton's The Experience of Landscape -maybe a sequel project :)

u/_Chemistry_ · 2 pointsr/Hoboken

You might be interested to see how San Francisco addressed street parking. They installed meters that would allow for variable pricing based upon supply and demand. I think this could work in Hoboken, especially along Washington Street, to encourage more short-term parking for the street and encourage people to use garages for long term parking.

Also there's a good book called "The High Cost of Free Parking" by Donald Shoup. There's an excerpt here that people can read.

u/Pixelated_Penguin · 1 pointr/LosAngeles

>But it would appear that the argument is that parking needs to be priced accordingly to cost of maintained the parking structure of what-have-you.

Nope, I'm not. Never have, never will.

Parking needs to be priced at the rate that will leave enough spaces free at any given time that people seeking parking can find a space in their first try, rather than circling. Fines have to be set at a rate where people feel that the risk of the fine is great enough that they'll pay the meter. Given how high our rate of unpaid meters is in Los Angeles, our fines aren't high enough (though I think this is more about average fines... in other words, rather than increasing the dollar amount of the fine further, I think we need to increase the chance you will get a ticket, but that's another discussion.)

That article, BTW, is one of his first efforts on the subject. The book was published in 2011. Since then, there have been a lot of other articles. Municipal parking garages are definitely a piece of the puzzle (he's opposed to requiring businesses to build in their own parking, for a lot of good reasons), but they don't really interact with meter rates. Instead, they're supported by their own parking fees and in-lieu fees from businesses who get exemptions from parking requirements.

u/cfamethuselah · 1 pointr/Calgary

Sometimes it's good to provide info and let people come to their own conclusions. If you're interested in how parking policy shapes land-use, affordability and opportunity in cities here's a great read. I can lend you my copy if you like. https://www.amazon.ca/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/193236496X

u/dukescalder · 4 pointsr/landscaping

Mostly they are there so you don't have an ungodly water bill. If you do want grass in the yard I'd suggest picking up a Palo Verde at a nursery. I wouldn't say I'm anti grass but I am for sure anti-new construction poorly thought out giant yard with no shade. There are a ton of plants that are hardy that work well in the natural soil of the Tularosa and nearby areas. If you're interested in landscaping your yard you may want to check out this book [Native Landscaping from El Paso to LA] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0809225115/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_K6p-Bb4RJXT7Z)

u/joeydsa · 1 pointr/Atlanta

There is no such thing as free parking. It cost money to build and maintain parking spaces, and that cost typically gets past on through the resident via either rent or purchase price. You pay for the premium weather you want to or not, but by requiring parking by law, you force others to pay for the premium as well.

If you're interested, I would recommend The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup

u/Kadin2048 · 2 pointsr/business

I'd never heard that, but I have heard several times that the U.S. trans-ships more freight from the West Coast to the East Coast, by rail, than goes through the Panama Canal.

The megafreighter/rail combo is so efficient that it's preferable to ship stuff to Europe from Asia by sending it to the West Coast, hauling it by rail to the East Coast, and then taking it to Europe on another ship, than to put it on a smaller ship and send it through the Panama or Suez Canals. And it's faster than sending it around Cape Horn.

I thought that was pretty surprising the first time I read it. Some huge percentage of Asian-manufactured consumer goods in Europe pass through the U.S. rail-freight system on their way to store shelves.

(Source on that is "Intermodal Freight Transport" by David Lowe, IIRC. Kind of a cool book if you're a train geek. Amazon)

u/kryost · 3 pointsr/Sacramento

> Sacramentans don't have a huge history of dealing with limited parking

In general, parking, especially free parking, in cities is seen as a something that is extremely harmful to the City success. So a lot of us can get pretty defensive about it because of the way that too much parking hurt Sacramento's development. UCLA Professor Donald Shoup has a good book on the idea.

Along with improving non-auto infrastructure, we will have to adapt to non-auto modes. It will take time, but will make Sacramento a much more prosperous City, and a better place to live.



u/italianismus · 1 pointr/ottawa

There aren't really any places where lots could be built for cities. The best solution is to keep them off the roads and put them underneath the hospital buildings, even though that'll cost even more money to build.

In any case parking isn't a thing the city should be encouraging. This book makes a great case, but building parking is really expensive and already massively subsidized. It also encourages people to drive, and surface parking isn't just a blight on urban areas (inhospitable for people), but contributes significant to Urban Heat Island Effect).

u/empenneur · 9 pointsr/LosAngeles

Sure. I'm an architect and when we get inquiries or RFPs the first thing we do is look at parking. I've worked on several large housing projects where the cost of underground parking has limited the size of the project because it stopped penciling out. Large complexes continue because demand is still high, but the cost is passed on directly to the tenant, which is why people complain that all new housing is expensive. Or maybe the developer wants a rooftop restaurant - those require 1 spot per 100 sf - that's huge!

In my experience, most planners agree that the market should dictate how much parking developers supply (see Donald Shoup) - if the developer doesn't think she can attract tenants without providing parking, then she's free to build as much as she wants, but others are free to try their hands renting units without a spot. I get it, parking in my neighborhood sucks too. There's an empty lot down the street from me; let's pretend I had enough money to buy it and pay the taxes on it (lol). It's a typical 50x100 RD1.5 lot, so take 5' off either side, 15' off the back and 15' off the front, leaving me with 2800sf buildable, which is a nice triplex, maybe two one-beds and a two-bed. But to do that I'd need at least five parking spaces... that eats into my ground floor space and net rentable area, pushes the project up on stilts, increases the amount of steel you need, or pushes the parking underground, adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to construction costs... it very quickly becomes not worth it.

u/kettal · 1 pointr/canada

Actually, many transit agencies do charge pass holders for parking. Just like hospitals do.

If you want to learn more about why that's a good thing, feel free to read The High Cost of Free Parking

u/rypalmer · 2 pointsr/teslamotors

This is not a new problem to solve.

https://www.amazon.ca/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/193236496X

I'd like to see Tesla move to a dynamic pricing model that takes occupancy into consideration in real time. The pricing model should optimize for a certain vacancy of stalls at any time, say 10-20%.

Using pricing projections, you could set your trip planner to optimize on shortest trip time or lowest cost.

u/chashiineriiya · 2 pointsr/LosAngeles

The Reluctant Metropolis by William Fulton. Not only does he talk about development and history of Los Angeles, but also how it relates to Orange County, the San Fernando Valley, and Las Vegas.

If you're interested in water and politics of the American west including Los Angeles, I also recommend Cadillac Desert -- pretty relevant in this multiyear drought

u/thecravenone · 6 pointsr/houston

The source for that stat appears to be this book . It sounds interesting but it's a bit pricey for something I'm only mildly curious about. Looks like Houston Public Library doesn't have it but there's a copy in the UH architecture library if anyone's interested.

u/evanstravers · 9 pointsr/Portland

A great book on the subject [The High Cost Of Free Parking] ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/193236496X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_tQ5czbK5B2K1P) shows how parking requirements in development make us all blindly legally subsidize a high-pollution way of life (to the tune of $127B in 2002 dollars) rather than allowing a market to determine the true costs of parking. It's required reading for Urban Designers.



u/danbrotherston · 1 pointr/waterloo

There are free 2 hour parking lots all over the uptown area: https://www.waterloo.ca/en/government/uptown.asp


As for street parking, if you're so close that the 2-3 minutes (uptown is really small) spent looking for a parking spot is longer than driving, you really could choose to bike or walk then, and save the parking for those coming much farther.


Additionally, this is a very strong argument for charging for street parking. If parking wasn't free, it could be priced such that there is always a space or two on every block. Then those who need quick parking, could use that, instead of parking being filled with people who could easily walk, or who are employees, etc.


This isn't my idea of course, the book, The High Cost of Free Parking, makes an extremely compelling argument for no free parking:


https://www.amazon.ca/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1537064357&sr=8-2&keywords=the+high+cost+of+free+parking&dpID=51r9KSb4DuL&preST=_SY264_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

u/admiralwaffles · 5 pointsr/boston

If you'd like a really interesting read, then check out this book. It's called The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup. If you're super lazy, listen to the Freakonomics podcast about it.

u/Prairieformer · 3 pointsr/landscaping

The Renegade Gardener

Tons of great landscape design info here. Going through the Design, Myth of the Week, and Don't Do That sections will pretty much put you in the top percentile of landscaping-literate homeowners.

You don't say where you're located, but I always recommend Creating the Prairie Xeriscape by Sara Williams. The plant selections are geared toward colder zones but the principles of low-water, low maintenance landscaping that isn't barren or sterile looking are applicable pretty much anywhere.

u/ItsTimeToPanic · 5 pointsr/HomeImprovement

Check out Larry Weaner's book Garden Revolution.
Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change https://www.amazon.com/dp/1604696168/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_VoVDDbRMV4EFJ

A great resource for exactly this kind of DIY. 🥰

u/pacifictime · 1 pointr/LosAngeles

All I'm saying is that if neighbors would like to convert a public street into a private parking lot, they ought to pay for that privilege. I'm not actually opposed to PPDs, I just felt someone should respond to /u/kheszi.

Parking requirements are actually a pretty thorny subject when you look at them close. If you're interested I recommend Donald Shoup's work.

u/davepsilon · 15 pointsr/boston

A lot of great thinking on urban parking including the cost it adds to development and the ramifications for livable cities was collected in the book [The High Cost of Free Parking](https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X). It is a thick tome, but it was suggested to me on reddit and reading it completely changed my view on parking regulations.

​

And shared use parking is a theme of some of the chapters. I think it's usually discussed in shared parking for multiple businesses that have different hours rather than apartments and businesses just because the businesses and residences are frequently in different areas.

u/kylemacmac · -3 pointsr/vancouver

Y'all might not want to realize the implications of this, but I strongly encourage you to read The High Cost of Free Parking.

u/howardson1 · 1 pointr/urbanplanning

I'm a libertarian urbanist, and the rank and file libertarians hate the morgage interest deduction, zoning laws, urban renewal, government subsidized highways, and other sprawl creating policies.

Good book on free market urbanism:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Slaughter-Cities-Renewal-Cleansing/dp/1587317753

http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Cities-Revitalizing-Centers-American/dp/0738201340/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403714503&sr=1-1&keywords=wealth+of+cities

http://www.amazon.com/Zoned-Out-Regulation-Transportation-Metropolitan/dp/1933115157/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403714530&sr=1-1&keywords=zoned+out

http://www.amazon.com/Our-Lot-Real-Estate-Came/dp/B005Q69JJQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403714545&sr=1-1&keywords=our+lot

http://www.amazon.com/Snob-Zones-Fear-Prejudice-Estate/dp/0807001570/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403714560&sr=1-1&keywords=snob+zones

http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Fiasco-Infatuation-Ownership-Afterword/dp/1937184412/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403714575&sr=1-1&keywords=financial+fiasco

http://www.amazon.com/Housing-Bias-Rethinking-Diverse-America/dp/0230110509/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403714629&sr=1-1&keywords=the+housing+bias

http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healthier/dp/159420277X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403714641&sr=1-1&keywords=triumph+of+the+city

http://www.amazon.com/Reckless-Endangerment-Outsized-Corruption-Armageddon-ebook/dp/B004H1TM1G/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403714658&sr=1-1&keywords=reckless+endangerment+gretchen+morgenson

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rent-Too-Damn-High-ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO
Their are a lot more.

http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/1884829988/ref=sr_1_1?s=textbooks-trade-in&ie=UTF8&qid=1405054547&sr=1-1&keywords=the+high+cost+of+free+parking

u/JorgeCS · 2 pointsr/newjersey

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/193236496X

You need to think in terms of what's best for the community. For residential areas near highly trafficked places, permit parking is probably best.

u/johnwalkr · 4 pointsr/lowcar

I thought you were going to talk about something else, which is how public planning currently values free parking above pretty much everything else. It's really shaped how cities sprawl. There's a whole book about it.

u/clothesliner · 9 pointsr/SeattleWA

I would love this! I often make the decision to drive to work, just because my bus commute is 2.5x the journey time (drive is 25-30 minutes, bus is 70-80 minutes). One of the reasons the bus commute is so long is because my local bus runs once an hour, leaving me with a 20 minute wait for a connection. I have to use it because the P&R fills up before 7am.

I would happily pay even a largish fee if I had a guaranteed spot at the P&R which would allow me to bus to work in a much more reasonable time (I estimate 35-40min).

On topic, this book is super fascinating: https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

> In this no-holds-barred treatise, Shoup argues that free parking has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people, and why American motor vehicles now consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production.

u/ChristopherStefan · 1 pointr/SeattleWA

> If we start charging for parking everywhere in the city neighborhoods will see less traffic, but less people will be interested in going in to check out the stores/restaurants/events.

Or you know, maybe more people will walk/bike/take transit.

Parking is one of the largest subsidies to SOV drivers. Professor Donald Shoup lays it all out in The High Cost of Free Parking.

u/ngroot · 1 pointr/chicago

> I would also like to see any research indicating a co-relation between parking rate increases and reduced "externalities". Pollution is a garbage excuse. The people are not parking downtown but they are still driving.

However, they're not driving around looking for parking, and everyone else isn't subjected to the increased congestion that that causes. This is addressed, evidence and all, in The High Cost of Free Parking.

u/pillbinge · 2 pointsr/boston

They're not. People's incomes might not have kept up, but the actual cost of free parking (and yes, read the book) is too much.

u/bmore · 4 pointsr/baltimore

I have no problem with people who have no other option except to drive to work, but I don't see why they shouldn't have to pay extra to leave their cars parked the majority of the day/night on what could otherwise be more productive property within a community.

I recommend this book as a good primer on the issues parking subsidies cause.

I don't think where I live really matters in regards to my opinion. I work in Mt. Vernon, I've lived in Mt. Vernon before, and I'll likely live there again.

If you look at the last downtown partnership studies, you'll see that a majority of Mt. Vernon residents work within 2 miles of their residence, and still drive to work despite having multiple other less harmful modes of transportation as options. If they choose to do that I believe they should have to pay more for their choices. I'm sorry that the few exceptions you identify would suffer as well, but I think despite your complaints the neighborhood improves with more transit, bike, and walking options, as well as more retail and residential properties, even at the expense of parking and road space for individual car users.

u/slashedzer0 · 3 pointsr/Sacramento

The initial cost of building a garage may be cheaper, but the maintenance and opportunity cost is ungodly expensive for a parking garage. There're some really strong opinions on how bad parking is (see: High cost of free parking), but building structures that are generally really ugly, don't include any eye candy, and are single use is totally a waste of really really expensive real estate. Leave the parking garages in the suburbs and make parking so expensive that people actually take the train to the stadium.

In some places, they've decided to convert previous parking garages into usable spaces. Boston has one called the Garage and it's super cool.

u/clarient · 2 pointsr/bicycling

Check out The High Cost of Free Parking if you feel like a serious read that basically supports everything you already think about cars and parking.

u/streever · 4 pointsr/rva

Well, somebody pays for it: the actual cost of a free parking spot in an otherwise develop-able area is $5/day.

It would be obnoxious of me to expect you to read all 733 pages of The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup (https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X), so I'll instead recommend this incredibly condensed and less broad 21 page paper by the same author on the topic (http://www.uctc.net/research/papers/351.pdf).

But, if you're really really really into fairly boring & long, exhaustively researched topics, I'd highly recommend the full book :D.

u/pdblouin · 3 pointsr/Sudbury

Then again, during peak times Uber has pretty crazy surge pricing to balance supply and demand. Edit: People are always suprised at surge pricing, with very little sympathy as the app makes it annoyingly clear. And another example from New Year's.

Taxis being forced to have a fixed price means that can't happen, so demand outstrips supply. Some argue that it's more accessible for everyone when prices are fixed, but the flip side is that yeah, no one can get a cab at peak times, so it's not really more accessible.

I personally like the adaptable prices. Many transit systems also have peak prices so that people who aren't forced to use a service at peak time will have an incentive to offload their usage to when there is less stress on the system.

Where I lose most people is when I point out that peak pricing could do great things for parking and roads, too.

u/roju · 0 pointsr/canada

Noise is a commons, and in order to prevent abuse, we usually allow government to regulate the use of commons. Limits on noise are perfectly reasonable, and in fact desirable.

Free parking is anything but - urban land is expensive. "Free parking" just means "subsidized by everyone else" parking. I don't see why someone too poor to own a motorbike/car should be subsidizing the parking of someone who can afford one.

u/Potatoroid · 3 pointsr/Austin

Here, read this book. Parking costs $$$ to provide the ~325 sq ft of space (~550 sq ft when including the driving space), especially opportunity costs (i.e. residences, businesses, etc that would actually be productive places). Mandating its inclusion and having it be of no cost to the user does soooo much to promote a cycle of automobile dependency, to the point where expecting free parking in a large city creates the very problem it was meant to solve.

u/toastspork · 4 pointsr/Economics

Most American suburbs have zoning that mandates a specific minimum amount of free parking. The point where it becomes a legal requirement is the point where it moves back from being a symptom to a cause. Now you can't easily walk to the next building over, because it's a half mile away, across two large parking lots that have no safe areas for pedestrians.

If mall and office building developers were allowed to build smaller parking lots with fewer spaces, and were allowed to charge for it, you'd better bet they would.

References: The High Cost of Free Parking, by Donald C. Shoup

u/player2 · 24 pointsr/SeattleWA

Luckily, other people have thought very hard and determined that mandatory off-street parking raises the cost of living overall.

u/OverTheFalls10 · 2 pointsr/sandiego

The economics of free street parking is quite interesting. This issue is much more impactful on the health of our cities than first glance may suggest. If you're really into it, here are 800 pages to feast on.

http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

u/sharpcowboy · 1 pointr/TrueReddit

I also recommend this book for those who are really interested in the subject.

From a review: " Shoup zeroes in on the reason for such problems: we assume that parking should be free. Shoup points out that if we decided that gasoline should be free, the result we would expect would be obvious: people would drive too much, shortages of gasoline would develop, fights would break out over scarce gas, and governments would go broke trying to pay for it all. Shoup shows that parking is no different. Providing free parking leads to overuse, shortages, and conflicts over parking. Cash-strapped local governments and neighborhoods lose out, too. Free parking is like a fertility drug for cars. Many people don't realize how much of the high price of housing is due to requirements by local governments that a certain number of parking spaces must be provided. These costs are paid by everyone, including those who don't own a car."

u/Austin98989 · 7 pointsr/TrueReddit

The high cost of free parking is by now so well-known that it is also the title of an eponymous book. Yet we spend massive amounts of money and cause tremendous externalities by trying to making parking "free." We can live saner and more productive lives by acknowledging these costs and becoming better systems thinkers.

u/oldbkenobi · 1 pointr/pittsburgh

You should check out this great book when you get a chance. We are all paying a lot for "free" parking, and those costs are often unfairly passed on to people who don't or can't drive to subsidize drivers.

u/[deleted] · 4 pointsr/Austin

For a concrete example:

One study written about in this amazing book found evidence that the minimum parking requirements in one area of LA increased the cost of housing by 26%

u/washegonorado · 7 pointsr/Denver

I don’t think ample on-street parking is necessary or even desirable for a great neighborhood. In fact, I’d say all the neighborhoods and towns I’ve most enjoyed living in and visiting have all had atrocious parking. There are private parking spaces for rent in Cap Hill if a lack of parking is a personal problem for you. Not to mention, there are minimum parking requirements in Denver (except for parts of downtown) which will force this developer to include plenty of parking in any residential structure.

(Side note, I'd bet that it's easier to find parking on Pearl Street on a Friday night than it is to find an urban planner who believes minimum parking requirements are good for society, but that's another topic, or book)

u/precordial_thump · 1 pointr/nyc

Hah. This article has the gall to cite Donald Shoup while complaining about taking away free on-street parking?

Perhaps they should have a read through The High Cost of Free Parking and then revisit this article.

u/BigVideoGamer69 · 2 pointsr/pittsburgh

Why would you expect the city to waste space that could be put to a better use on parking for you? That would be a waste of valuable space, which is in short supply in such a geographically small downtown area.
 
This book is specifically about free parking, but addresses how wasteful in general parking is.
https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X
 
Long story short, expecting a city that you don't even pay taxes towards to provide something for you is an incredibly entitled mindset. Maybe cities aren't for you.
 
e: Actually, Houston just might be the city for you:
http://i1117.photobucket.com/albums/k591/birdboy1/parking-houston.jpg

u/TedWashingtonsBelly · 0 pointsr/burlington

Recommended reading for individuals who don't actually know anything about parking policy: The High Cost of Free Parking
, Walkable City

u/swissnumberedaccount · 1 pointr/bikecommuting

Last estimates I saw were ~10k for surface and ~40k for structure based off a ton of them built over a few decades in California.

Source is The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup https://www.amazon.ca/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

Edit: the book also discusses the cost to maintain the parking stalls as well, IIRC it's on the order of $100-200/month. I can find that chapter when I get home.

u/djrobstep · 1 pointr/melbourne

> It didn't spread out because cars take up room.

Yes it did. Building car parks and highways causes sprawl.

Read anything about the history and causes of suburban sprawl and you'll find out that this is exactly what happened.

You can tell that this is the case because in places like Amsterdam where they didn't do this, people generally don't own cars, and bike everywhere.

Read this for instance: https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

Or just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odF4GSX1y3c

u/whiskeytangohoptrot · 21 pointsr/SeattleWA

> You wanna just let the city start charging us to park on streets we already paid for?

The High Cost of Free Parking goes into this. If you want the reader's digest version, here's an episode of Planet Money that goes into it.

u/RVelts · 1 pointr/Austin

Parking is expensive. This book is a great read on that: http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

u/smckenzie23 · 2 pointsr/vancouver

And with any thought at all it should be something that voters are strongly against. It turns out there is a high cost to free parking. Man I hope that idiot doesn't get in.

u/Mesonoptic · 2 pointsr/FortWorth

TANSTAAFL, y'all. Oodles of parking costs oodles of money, and it's nothing short of absolutely fair and dandy that parking co$t$ there - either pay up directly, or visit an approved merchant (indirect payment).

u/JanetYellensFuckboy · 32 pointsr/neoliberal

I'd highly recommend the High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup (RIP) on this subject. Great, pioneering book about how we fail to deal with the huge externalities of personal automobiles.

u/glmory · 0 pointsr/LosAngeles


Parking is a low value use of land which discourages the growth of public transit. There is no good reason for LA to be mandating anyone build more parking than makes economic sense.

I refer you to this book for a good description of why the quest for too much free parking just makes cities worse places to live.

u/AEQVITAS_VERITAS · 4 pointsr/GoldandBlack

Donald Shoup has a book by the same name that is fascinating
Here is an excerpt and you can buy it here

u/dbarc · 2 pointsr/LandscapeArchitecture

Speaking as an ecologist/MLA student, I'd recommend:

[Land Mosaics - The Ecology of Landscapes and Regions] (http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/life-sciences/ecology-and-conservation/land-mosaics-ecology-landscapes-and-regions#Z1soSK6SqqTFIWBR.99) by Richard Forman (more classic, approachable, design-relevant)

Landscape Ecology in Theory and Practice by Turner & Gardner (more technical/scientific, quantitative, up-to-date)

Also rec'd and relevant is Marsh's Landscape Planning, basically an applied spatial/environmental planning text/manual.

Landscape ecology is basically a sub-discipline of ecology (the study of interactions among/between organisms and their environment) with a spatial, and often broad-scale focus (sq-km to 10,000s of sq-km). As /u/OneiricGeometry says, it's an academic discipline more than a professional field, but one highly relevant to work in design, planning, and environmental management.

Edit: Also highly rec Design With Nature, even if it's a bit dated, it communicates well in words, photos, and graphics, a way of thinking that is central to landscape planning and design.

u/maskdmirag · 1 pointr/LosAngeles

Yep, that's exactly the problem, there's a huge underlying problem that needs to be solved, but the benefits of solving it are very hard to prove.

Donald Shoup (as much as I hate giving a bruin credit) is doing really good work looking at the overall problem of parking, he literally wrote the book on it: http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Parking-Updated-Edition/dp/193236496X

u/jsvh · 9 pointsr/Atlanta

It's because we try to push too much free parking in this city. You can write a book about it: https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

This article can give you an overview: https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/19/15993936/high-cost-of-free-parking

-Also a former valet driver.

u/harlottesometimes · 5 pointsr/SeattleWA

The High Cost of Free Parking by vintage, urbanist pinup Donald "ShoupDogg" Shoup remains irrelevant in a conversation about customers renting curb space.

u/HDThoreauaway · 4 pointsr/WhitePeopleTwitter

You should take a skim through Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking, and give a Google to "induced demand." It becomes clearer what the operating theory is.

u/heygorges · 1 pointr/asheville

For the wonks out there, check out the book "The High Cost of Free Parking." Made a lot waves when it came out in 2011.

u/ArchEast · 2 pointsr/Atlanta

Minor correction: the book's title is The High Cost of Free Parking.

Amazon link

u/nuotnik · 10 pointsr/urbanplanning

Here's the podcast, Parking Is Hell

They interview Donald Shoup, who is basically the expert on parking policy, and the author of The High Cost of Free Parking.

u/energy_engineer · 5 pointsr/sanfrancisco

Some relevant reading on the subject of Free Parking.

By the same author (but free to read), a somewhat old but still interesting read on on free parking cost and city planning. (pdf)

-------
Parking is a consumable and limited resource (especially when observed at a neighborhood level). Limited resources should have an associated cost.

u/literallyARockStar · 6 pointsr/Somerville

If all you're doing is moving your car every a few spaces down every two days, why even have a car?

I don't really want to do an extended internet argument about parking and urban planning. This is basically what I'd say, but better: https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

u/rls669 · 1 pointr/landscaping

Check out Creating the Prairie Xeriscape. Great book, all the info you need to set up a low maintenance garden that can withstand northern winters.

u/wasteabuse · 4 pointsr/landscaping

Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change is a good one too. I think Xerces Society has California specific plant suggestions and sources

u/bartleby · 6 pointsr/milwaukee

"Half as much parking downtown" is an absurd exaggeration.

Also, there is a bloated amount of parking in downtown Milwaukee as it is. It always amuses me that people expect free or subsidized storage for their private vehicles in a dense urban core. People in Milwaukee, and America in general, have a terrible understanding of parking economics.

u/kovu159 · 6 pointsr/LosAngeles

Uh, go to Palms at 7pm and try to park.

If you actually care about this, here's a great book about the issue. Parking in Westwood can take 15-20+ minutes due to a parking shortage, which promoted an economist to try to determine what pricing strategies could be used to solve the parking shortage in the city. The shortage is very real and has very real costs.

u/Empact · 2 pointsr/politics

There are 2 parts to the automobile society problem. One of them is building an alternative, which I'm glad to see Obama is working towards. The other side of this is the substantial subsidies the federal government has been giving car travel for decades. Train travel wasn't killed only by Detroit, it was killed also by a free interstate highway system.

I recently gave a talk (slides) about these car subsidies: parking mandates and infrastructure costs which far exceed the user fees paid via the gas tax. As transportation is extremely cost sensitive (as Donald Shoup has shown, for example with his parking cash-out studies), these subsidies make the difference between a sea of suburbs and a denser network of European-style villages & cities.

So don't get lost only in building rail networks, as correcting perverse subsidies is just as important as building an alternative.

u/lovela · 1 pointr/LosAngeles

Interesting point but I disagree.

You're citing Donald Shoup, the author of the paper I linked above. He did the full economic analysis and believes that we should eliminate parking minimums.

He also is very clear that we should charge appropriate prices for street parking.

Eliminating parking minimums is not a subsidy to property developers and property owners. Charging below-market fees for street parking is.

Since you cited Shoup as your primary evidence, in addition the the previously-linked article (http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/Trouble.pdf), I'd also check out his book https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X (paper here http://www.uctc.net/research/papers/351.pdf)

[Longer-term, I suspect that self-driving cars are going to make it so that we call cars using our phones. They'll actually park farther away from the denser areas where people live. In that case, I hope we don't cast huge parking lots into concrete when they could be built into things that have productive use.]

u/greencoat2 · 0 pointsr/nashville

Free parking is literally one of the worst things ever to happen to cities.


The High Cost of Free Parking, Updated Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/193236496X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_saYUDb65AC042

u/vitingo · 8 pointsr/transit

If you have the technical skills, make maps. I'm a programmer, so I made a transit app for my local system. Get in touch with other transit advocates in your area. Perhaps you can agree on some low hanging fixes and lobby for them. Deepen your understanding of the problem, I suggest Human Transit and The High Cost of Free Parking

u/Midnight_in_Seattle · 10 pointsr/SeattleWA

> our condo has a free parking spot

It may be superficially "free," but you may also be able to rent it for $50 – $150 per month, depending on where you live and your condo's rules. That's a lot of money over time!

u/Tuilere · 9 pointsr/WaltDisneyWorld

It's fundamentally a user fee. Americans are over-used to "free" parking, and there is a huge cost for that parking built into many prices all over the place.

https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X is relevant.

u/robbysalz · 0 pointsr/Dallas

And actually, NO, I'm going to completely approve this.

Dallas needs more density and less parking surface lots. Areas with balanced density are areas with focused economic/business/life activity.

Read a book, bro

  • High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup

  • Walkable City by Jeff Speck

    You haven't answered the question of whether or not the DHA has addressed your issues. What's your motive for wanting to deny requests? What other issues are you envisioning? How can they be addressed?
u/OstapBenderBey · 2 pointsr/sydney

This is the best book - though American (and things are far worse there - particularly the 'free' part in the title), many of the issues still apply

https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

u/bryguytwoply · 5 pointsr/Hamilton

It is not a basic quality of life concern, are you insane? More parking is always a good thing? Read this, or any other urban planning book from the past 40 years.

https://www.amazon.ca/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/193236496X

u/brendax · 3 pointsr/vancouver

https://www.amazon.ca/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/193236496X

this is considered mandatory reading in planning circles.

u/Lol-I-Wear-Hats · 2 pointsr/bayarea

Donald Shoup has calculated that mandatory parking might be America's single most expensive social program

u/sumerced · -4 pointsr/Minneapolis

This is a plagiarized title and most of the content is probably plagiarized too. https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

u/lingual_panda · 2 pointsr/urbanplanning

Have you read Donald Shoup's essays on parking? He also has a book out but I won't read it until there's a kindle version.

u/iAmRoger · 1 pointr/TrueReddit

I guess that Mr Shoup was right!

u/EvanHarper · 2 pointsr/toronto

People should have to pay market prices for parking, whether they're parking a food truck there or not. (By the way, that would mean drastically less parking, as parking is heavily subsidized.)

u/unclebumblebutt · 14 pointsr/VictoriaBC

Driving around looking for parking represents ~1/3rd of all vehicle miles travelled.

More: https://fee.org/articles/parking-regulations-cause-traffic-congestion-but-the-market-can-help/If you really want to go down the rabbit hole: https://www.amazon.ca/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X


Edit: more on the 1/3rd VMT that says it may be much lower http://docs.trb.org/prp/17-04407.pdf

u/Smiziley · 2 pointsr/WTF

San Francisco, his study area is actually implementing his suggestions coming April 21. You should attempt to read his book if you're interested in parking as a concept of unintentionally bad planning.

u/ohmywhatwoodwork · 3 pointsr/Detroit

Whatever knuckleheads started this petition should read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Parking-Updated-Edition/dp/193236496X

Free parking is BAD. End of story.

u/downstairsneighbor · 1 pointr/Seattle

There's a theory floating around that increasing the number of parking spaces in a neighborhood actually has a negative effect.

It's debatable, but seems to resonate a lot with people here.

u/jeff303 · 2 pointsr/baltimore

The argument he's making actually isn't against city-owned garages (even though that's the point he desperately wants to make given that it's The Atlantic). The argument is actually against parking that is "too cheap," which is a perfectly valid and not-at-all novel argument to pose. See this book for example.

The city could still raise prices and retain ownership.

u/Captain_Unremarkable · 21 pointsr/ShitAmericansSay

>Ok, what's unique about US problem?

Oh my god, I'm sure a plethora of master's theses have been written on this subject. This book comes to mind, for starters:

http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Parking-Updated-Edition/dp/193236496X

(Note that it is written by a UCLA professor--yes, Los Angeles, the city with arguably the worst traffic problem in the world.)

Also note I am not saying that the USA is a special snowflake; that's SAS fodder and I know it. But yes, we are unique in the literal sense of the word.

Now we're beginning to scratch the surface. Or at least, that's what I believe.

^But ^I'm ^really ^upset ^and ^overwhelmed ^with ^my ^fucking ^university's ^course ^scheduling ^process ^in ^this ^moment: ^disclaimer.

u/stiflin · 4 pointsr/Portland

There's extensive, well-regarded research showing that parking requirements raise rents: http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Parking-Updated-Edition/dp/193236496X Professional economists overwhelmingly agree with that book's core claims: http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_3aeMp7lK74rrVFa

You can choose it ignore it, and there's no such thing as conclusive "proof", but saying the evidence isn't incredibly strong is basically sticking your head in the sand.

u/AsSubtleAsABrick · 3 pointsr/jerseycity

The underlying premise is that free/cheap parking is bad. It causes inefficiencies in the whole system. The article indirectly references this book.

u/dkesh · 9 pointsr/AskMen

I'm a radical Shoupian. The cultural idea that parking costs should be mostly paid for by the owner of the building, not the person parking, has led to bad architecture, bad traffic, bad environmental outcomes, and less enjoyable places. We should end minimum parking regulations, and price on-street parking better.

u/la_re_agent · 2 pointsr/LosAngeles

The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles

> William Fulton chronicles the history of urban planning in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, tracing the legacy of short-sighted political and financial gains that has resulted in a vast urban region on the brink of disaster. Looking at such diverse topics as shady real estate speculations, the construction of the Los Angeles subway, the battle over the future of South Central L.A. after the 1992 riots, and the emergence of Las Vegas as "the new Los Angeles," Fulton offers a fresh perspective on the city's epic sprawl. The only way to reverse the historical trends that have made Los Angeles increasingly unliveable, Fulton concludes, is to confront the prevailing "cocoon citizenship," the mind-set that prevents the city's inhabitants and leaders from recognizing Los Angeles's patchwork of communities as a single metropolis.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Reluctant-Metropolis-Politics-Angeles/dp/0801865069

u/victornielsendane · 1 pointr/Denmark

Undskyld, det meste af det kommer fra mit urban economics fag på min udveksling.

Jeg remser ikke negative ting op om biler. Jeg remser ting op ved biler, som koster andre end bilisten penge, som bilisten ikke fuldt ud selv betaler for uden en skat på kørsel.

Man forsinker andre, fordi andre biler gør at du kommer langsommere frem (når der ikke er så mange har det ikke den store effekt). Jo flere biler der er, jo mere er der tendens til køer. Jeg har et powerpoint slide fra min undervisning. https://imgur.com/a/MxI7c og her https://imgur.com/a/zxGdu. For at opsummere: "congestion" fører til forlænget rejsetid (34 timer pr. pendler om året), spildt brændstof (2,2% af årligt forbrug), forhøjet CO2 udslip (18 mio tons/året), forurening er årsagen til 8.600 "premature" fødsler, hvor den største omkostning er den forlængede rejsetid, idet den rejsetid kunne have været bedre brugt på f.eks. arbejde.
I Toronto er prisen for trængsel estimeret til at være 3,3 milliarder dollars + 2,7 milliarder dollars fra mistet BNP fra tiden brugt i trafik i stedet for arbejde. http://www.metrolinx.com/en/regionalplanning/costsofcongestion/costs_congestion.aspx

Ja en benzinbil forurener både globalt og lokalt. En elbil forurener kun globalt og det afhænger af hvor effektivt og grøn ens energi produktion er. Derfor giver det mening at afgiften på den her front er lidt mindre for elbilen.

Risiko for uheld: Der sker biluheld. Det koster både i skader og sundhedsvæsenet. Skaderne kan spores tilbage til bilerne. Teknisk set hvis nogle biler er sikre end andre og derfor har en mindre risiko for uheld, så bør de have en mindre skat, men man skal også huske at når der bliver reklameret for at en bil er sikker, er den så sikker for chaufføren og passagererne eller alle andre? (nok mest chaufføren og passagererne).

Skade på vejene. Når biler - specielt tunge biler - bruger vejene, slider de dem - går specielt ud over broer. Med tiden kommer der huller og andre skader, som så kræver vejarbejde, som koster penge.

Ulemperne ved trængsel, forurening og biluheld er kort gjort op her i den meget berømte bog, Freakonomics, af Steven Levitt og Stephen Dubner: http://imgur.com/a/QWm4z - her bliver det faktisk understreget at forurening ikke er bilers største omkostning:

  • "The texas transportation institute estamtes theat in 2000 the 75 largest metropolitan areas experienced 3.6 billion vehicle hours of delay, resulting in 21.6 billion liters in wasted fuel and 67.5 billion dollars in lost productivity, or about 0.7% of the nation's GDP"

  • "Aaron Edlin and Pinar Mandic in a paper i was proud to publish in the Journal of Political Economy, argue convincingly that each extra driver raises the insurance cost of other drivers by about 2000 dollars. Their key point is that if my car is not there to crash into, maybe a crash never happens. They conclude that the appropriate tax would generate 220 billion dollars annually."

  • "If you can believe Wikipedia's entry on the carbon tax, the social cost of a ton of carbon put into the atmosphere is about 43 dollars. (Obviously there is a huge standard error to this number, bus let's just run with it.) If that number is right, then the gas tax needed to offset the global warming effect is about twelve cents per gallon. According to a National Academy og Sciences report, American motor vehicles burn about 160 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel each year. At twelve cents a gallon, that implies a 20 billion dollar global waming externality. So relative to reducing congestion and lowing the number of accidents, fighting global warming is a distant third in terms of reasons to raise the gas tax."

    Mere vejplads: Alle vejene er blevet bygget for bilister. Derfor giver det mening at bilister betaler prisen det har kostet af bygge vejene for at bruge dem på en måde der sikrer at det går lige op. En gang var vejene faktisk privatejede og man betalte en afgift for at køre på dem, men nu bliver det anset som et offentligt gode. Cliff Winston snakker her (dog kontroversielt blandt selv økonomer) om hvordan toge, lufthavne og veje burde være privatejede: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/10/winston_on_tran.html
    Andre økonomer ville mene at mange at problemerne ville kunne løses ved bare at give færre subsidier til veje, lufthavne og toge og samtidigt skabe betaling for vejene.

    Den her artikel forklarer noget af det: http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/01/the-real-reason-us-gas-is-so-cheap-is-americans-dont-pay-the-true-cost-of-driving/384200/ - se skemaet over omkostningerne.

    Andet godt læseligt (ift. parkering):
    https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=
u/thekbob · -1 pointsr/japan

How is posting the truth of the situation "heels dug in?" Everyone used public transportation or walking for almost all of human history and most nations do so except one really big standout; the USA.

I have an issue because I've read about how cars have changed the American landscape, from creating the idea of personal debt in America, or how they are an unfair cost burdening the lower class.

All without even talking about the terrible environmental impact they've had on our society. Cars are really, really bad and we should be having a hair on fire moment to change that now.