On the Surface: The End of the Downtown Parking Lot

In Vancouver, the era of the amazing disappearing parking lot started, as I recollect, in Downtown South in the 1990s.

We went from this:

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To this:

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Today, I doubt there are a half dozen surface parking lots left.  They are simply too valuable to be used for storing vehicles … as other cities are now realizing.

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From BusinessWeek:

Communities are targeting parking facilities for transformation because they’re a “lazy asset,” said Gabe Klein, a senior visiting fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington.

“From an economic standpoint, the cities are not getting the taxes that they should be,” said Klein, who has worked on transportation policies in Washington and Chicago.

Parking lots are natural for development because there’s often no demolition involved and chances of running into environmental issues are lower.

At the same time, Americans are driving less than they did eight years ago. From 2001 to 2009, the greatest decline was among people ages 16 to 34, according to a May report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

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[Recommended for Next Generation Transportation.]