Cities around the world are abolishing parking requirements🚗🅿️.
Toronto 🇨🇦 is just the latest.
But why?!👇
Parking requirements - a thread🧵
Firstly, parking requirements are random. They are neither based in research, nor data. Parking minimums are random government mandates to allocate a proportion of space on privately owned land for cars - no matter if necessary or not.
The building 🏢 below ? All lower floors are parking.
Why? Because.
Cities don't survey existing parking to see if their requirements are rational, and they often are not.
We have actually ruined our cities for parking lots.
Here is a mapping of parking in Little Rock, Arkansas 🇺🇸 👇👇
Parking minimums are based on assumptions that people drive their car everywhere. Not true. Large part of societies are neither capable to drive, nor able to afford driving. In many parts of the world more than 50% of people do not choose cars when they do have the alternative.
Parking minimums have tremendous negative impacts on
➡️ Climate change
➡️ Streetlife
➡️ Quality of life
➡️ Opportunities
➡️ Affordability
CLIMATE CHANGE
Parking takes enormous energy to construct. Produce and pour cement, and then build a structure on top of that. Especially cement produces carbon emissions in mass quantities.
Parking incentivizes more car driving. Cars are the most inefficient mode of transport and produce more carbon emissions than any other. More driving leads to the construction of more roads, automobile oriented planning and the marginalisation of other modes of transport. 👇👇
STREETLIFE & LIVEABILITY
Parking minimums lead to buildings like the one left. With housing placed up in the air and removed from street life. Joyful and liveable neighbourhoods are now illegal - also because of parking requirements.
OPPORTUNITIES
Because parking and driving takes up so much space - car oriented cities grow outwards and not upwards. This leads to increased distances, less population density and less opportunities in the vicinity. Small businesses struggle to survive.
New businesses, amenities or housing are outlawed or stay vacant because parking requirements cannot be met.
AFFORDABILITY
The construction of parking is the most expensive part of vehicular ownership. Parking space costs more to construct, rent and buy than many cars cost to lease/own.
1 parking spot included with an apartment typically accounts for ~10% of the monthly rental price.
Parking requirements dictate how much housing can be build. Higher parking requirements therefore limit housing and elevate the housing crisis, making housing less affordable.
This is not a small issue. We give more space for parking than we do for people. Just look at the size of the area in Los Angeles 🇺🇸 dedicated to parking 👇👇
Ask you government to abolish parking minimums and You will save the climate, increase quality of life, create thriving businesses and a more affordable city.👇
Like to learn even more on parking? Please have a look at the great work / tweets by @lukehklipp which inspired this thread. Please also have a look at the work by @DonaldShoup@PaulABarter@twjpdx23. I do recommend to follow all of these accounts.
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German Railway begins construction of overhead wire islands.
➡️ The electrification of railway lines is complex and expensive. Deutsche Bahn is therefore starting to equip only shorter sections with overhead wires.
In this case the railway lines are not fully equipped with overhead wires, but only partially.
Battery trains are then used on the routes, which can charge their batteries on the electrified parts of the route and use the stored energy to go on sections without overhead wires.
Planning effort and costs of such islands should be significantly lower than the electrification of entire routes.
This @nytimes feature gained a lot of attention. It’s principal assessment is spot on: We are making progress towards climate action, but will likely fail 1.5C. I believe it also offers a good account of the messy nature of international politics 🧵nytimes.com/interactive/20…
The climate issue is inherently complex, touching basically every field of policy making and transcending government tiers and borders. The discussion on climate is made in many arenas and it’s only logical that we see progress in some, yet regression in others.
This makes it hard to assess where we overall stand on the issue, even for many people working in the field, and it makes reports from @IPCC_CH and the like even more import.
I am more positive right now about the state of climate action than at many times in the last decade..
This small hospital 🏥 in Bangladesh 🇧🇩 has just been named best new building in the world @RIBA.
🤔 WHY?! ➡️ it’s a lesson in climate resilient architecture.
Here is what architects and builders worldwide can learn from this building 👇🧵
“Rising sea levels caused by the climate crisis have meant that the surrounding landscape of grain fields has been transformed into shrimp fisheries, while the groundwater has become too saline to use for most purposes.”
“In the rainy season, locals do everything they can to collect and store every last drop of fresh water.”
“The canal zigzags its way through the site, collecting valuable rainwater and helping to cool the surrounding courtyards during the sweltering summer months.”
The transport sector accounts for 24% of global energy related CO2 emissions and is the fastest growing emission source. Yet, a clear-cut transformation path is missing. To close this gap @TUMInitiative and @UTSEngage developed a robust scenario: the #TUMIOutlook 1.5˚C. ➡️🧵1/9
Only urgent climate action today will limit global warming: We have 99 months from 2021 to 2030 to take significant action. The TUMI Transport Outlook 1.5˚C provides concrete pathways of action towards a transport sector in line with the Paris Agreement.
For the first time we map out a global roadmap to a transport sector in line with the 1.5˚ C threshold. The recommendations build around 3 pillars:
1 Avoiding the need to travel 2. Shifting to more efficient modes of transport 3. Improving efficiency through vehicle technology