Back in spring, when it seemed everyone in the city was angry about Portland’s parking supply, Alan Durning came to town and chided our electeds.
“It’s a little bit like I’ve arrived in some nightmare alternative-reality version of Portland,” Durning, founder and executive director of Seattle-based Sightline Institute, told city commissioners on the verge of imposing off-street parking minimums on developments throughout the city. “I am deeply disheartened to hear this debate today about backing away from Portland’s leadership position.”
But Durning hadn’t come to town to speak out. He was actually in the middle of researching a big project examining parking policy in modern cities. I’m just wading into the product of Durning’s work, “Parking? Lots!”, but I can already recommend it to those of you who’ve kept the flames of April kindled in your hearts.
The latest installment, which dropped today, is an interesting explanation of how parking minimums effectively create more-expensive housing—and less of it—while promoting sprawl. These effects “interact and reinforce one another,” Durning argues.
They knock the bottom off of the apartment market, pushing working-class people to double up or commute longer distances. They raise the rent for everyone, driving up the cost of living while lowering the price of parking. And they shift parking costs to those who don’t use it.
With Metro anticipating households in the city will increase by between 44 and 57 percent by 2035 [PDF], these are things we need to think about. Give it a read, and either sanctimoniously nod or rail quietly against Durning’s wrong-headedness.
You’d think that “urbanists” would eventually start to get a bit suspicious about article after article which conveniently confirm their every anti-car and anti-suburban biases with a bunch of weak anecdotal arguments from planners and other liberal arts types.
I mean, is it possible that Alan Durning of the Sightline Institute which promotes “sustainable solutions” may have had some conclusions about parking already in mind before he undertook this “study”?
Oh look, here’s another “study” by a “social ‘scientist'” demonstrating that cars give you genital warts and the suburbs were probably behind the Kennedy assassination.
“Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.”
Since Portland has been building condos and apartments with no onsite parking for years in trendy neighborhoods and prices have been pretty high and still climbing, isn’t Durning’s thesis a little late? Parking or no parking, people who can afford what’s being built(outside of subsidized, income-restricted units that basically go to Section 8) are the people willing to pay over $1500 a month to rent or over $300,000 to buy a fairly small one bedroom apartment close in and nearby in walking distance to restaurants and bars.
I’m fine with Portland filling in every available lot close in with more quickly-built eco-condos to sell to the latest round of transplants fresh off a Jet Blue flight from JFK, but let’s not pretend that requiring them including parking is going to somehow be the reason that working class people live and continue to move way out east of 82nd or north of Killingsworth.
Affordability in inner Portland went out the door years ago, let’s not pretend that density is somehow going to make it cheaper to live in desirable areas.
I’m mad about parkour, saw a woman tonight having to dodge some idiot falling off a railing at 2nd & Mad.
Again, the big lie is that the people who buy these units won’t own cars. Next they’ll tell us that rich people don’t like drinking expensive wine, or dining out at fancy restaurants– because it’s not “sustainable” or some shit. Oh, I’m sure that brand of hypocrisy will never go out of style.
Total garbage. Rich people will continue to have all the lifestyle toys they want. The only compromise they’ll make is parking their Audis or Mini Coopers (or fuck it, it’s not like Subaru doesn’t make a $60k SUV) on the street en masse.
But that compromise– lack of heated, secured, indoor parking– is worth it to them, you see, because with such a “high walk score” location they barely need to drive their cars at all. Hear that? It’s the screech of few thousand yuppies’ facebook status updates gushing about how there’s a food cart near their new condo.
Actually having the private space to house your vehicle doesn’t matter when you can simply pawn off the cost on your ever-more-displaced neighbors, who might have to use their cars for more than just weekend shopping trips to the PSU farmers market and whatever recreational wellness activity is currently en vogue amongst the deep-pocketed.