by Caitlin Kenney

Mott S. writes:

In your Elinor Ostrom podcast, you asked for examples of communities bucking the "tragedy of the commons" through the most local kind of action, and I've got one. I'm working with a group of small businesses in a walkable L.A.neighborhood who are using exactly this principal with parking.

Now, because L.A., like most cities in North America, still has a suburban-oriented parking code, buildings in older walkable neighborhoods have no way of providing all the on-site parking our zoning codes require. As a result, businesses that want to locate in these areas usually the sort of independent shops and restaurants urban people love — are forced to go through 1-2 year approvals processes before they get their permits, while 7-Elevens, Taco Bells and shopping malls get their plans stamped over the counter, simply because they satisfy the zoning requirements for lots of dedicated on-site parking

 

One of the crazy things I see all the time in my work (I'm an urban planner and community developer) is that these neighborhoods that are supposedly so under-parked that every new mom-and-pop coffee house has to spend $50K on consultants to convince the city they should be allowed to open is that there is without fail TONS of available parking. The only problem is, it's all on private property, and it was provided to satisfy whatever parking codes existed when the appurtenant buildings were built. In this one neighborhood, for example, which has a walking district of about 0.8 miles, we counted close to 1,000 parking spaces behind the existing buildings, a clear majority of which sit empty all day long.

Typically, when a new cafe or restaurant asks the city for permission to open in a building without full code-required parking, the city forces them to lease spaces somewhere else in the neighborhood, often at a gas station, car wash or office building that empties out in the evening. One typical restaurant in this neighborhood was required to lease about 40 spaces the full amount the parking code requires — at a cost of $4,000 a month. They were also required to hire a valet service. Unsurprisingly, the valets charge so much for their service that most patrons still look for street parking. So, of the 40 spaces this restaurant leases, about 8 per night are actually occupied.

If another restaurant wanted to open in the vacant storefront next door, and wanted to use some of those 40 already-leased spaces to satisfy its code requirements, the city would say no. They would instead be required to go find 40 spaces somewhere else (probably at a higher price because there's more scarcity now) and hire their own valet and the same thing would happen yet again. Meanwhile, because the restaurant patrons and employees prefer looking for cheap or free street parking to paying $7 for a valet, the streets get more and more packed with cars, and nearby residents get upset. They feel cheated by the City Planning Department, who appears to have failed in its efforts to control congestion through the regulatory process.

For the last 50 years, few cities have found a way to deal with this problem of regulating parking in walkable neighborhoods that abut residential ones. And that's why this is so exciting. Instead of every restaurant leasing enough parking and hiring enough valet support that they'll be able to park all their customers on the busiest day of the year, multiple businesses will be able to share valet operations and, more importantly, share off-street parking, so each one wont have to pay for 32 spaces they're not using on a regular basis.

Hearing Elinor Ostrom talk about the Swiss meadows reminded me a lot of this situation. Just as the Swiss farmers never know year-to-year which part of the meadow will have the best grass, the businesses in this neighborhood never know night-to-night where the most parking will be available. In both cases, collective ownership makes much better sense than everyone for himself.