First off, I want to point out that I am totally on team /c/fuckcars. I highly believe in transit, walking, and biking.
That being said, I think it’s fair to say that:
- Cars aren’t fully going away anytime soon
- Even in our wildest dreams, it still makes sense for cars to be usable in some way, just that the other transport methods are highly prioritized.
So the discussion I want to have is about parking garages, and the hate I see towards them from the urbanist community.
I feel like parking garages vaguely align with urbanist views, because they are high density, and they allow someone to drive to a general area after which they can do the rest of their transportation via other methods.
To put it into perspective, I’d rather have 1-3 dense parking garages in a neighborhood than have street parking along all the roads plus wide open parking lots around grocery stores and whatnot.
I understand this is a lesser of the two evils discussion but it seems to me like parking garages are the clear winner.
I’m not aware of any hate for them, although they have some downsides. They require a lot of concrete to build (bad for the environment) and they are very expensive.
they also are a heaven for break-ins since who’s going to secure a parking garage? Some low-rent Pinkerton who doesn’t give a fuck who’s going to call the cops, who also don’t give a fuck.
The rent-a-cops who occasionally patrol parking garages only wish they were Pinkertons. Which arguably makes them even worse.
This should be a perfect opportunity for video, especially with motion sensing. That low-rent Pinkerton may give more of a fuck when his response need only be “if you see something suspicious, don’t open the gate until the cops arrive”