• Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Cities today are orders of magnitude larger (population-wise) than cities in the early 1900s and this is largely due to plumbing and fire codesn Parking is like an afterthought in terms of city planning of any size, usually.

    Parking in most US cities is insane because of lobbying and corruption by the car industry. The design challenges aren’t unique.

    The problem in the US is not size or distance or density, none of those are in any way unique.

    The #1 biggest difference between US and other countries is lobbying by car companies. In the US car companies have created not only a plethora of pseudoscientific parking laws but also import/export, safety, transit, and emission laws. None of which make any sense.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Take a look at aerial photos of cities in the US in the early 1900s vs the same cities today. In every single case, 50% or more of the land had buildings torn down to put in flat level parking lots. Population wise they are larger, but they are also way less dense than we used to build.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        That’s exactly the point. Cities in the US have expanded despite insane and arbitrary parking requirements. The affordability crisis and the ‘strip-mall-ification’ of the US are something that are inexorably linked. We don’t build affordable housing anymore, we build parking lots and suburbs.

        This fixation on suburbs and parking lots is a major factor in the affordability crisis we face