WSJ: No Parking… Cities rethink garages for a world with fewer cars

By Scott Calvert | GLOBEST.COM

WSJ: No Parking… Cities rethink garages for a world with fewer cars

The Future of Everything covers the innovation and know-how reworking the best way we dwell, work and play, with month-to-month points on health, money, artificial intelligence and extra. This month is Cities & Actual Property, on-line beginning June 4 and within the paper on June 11.

Architects, city planners and parking business consultants at the moment are imagining a future during which parking garages are become business kitchens, health facilities and transportation hubs the place driverless taxis recharge between journeys. Parking buildings whose sloping flooring make them onerous to repurpose can be candidates for the wrecking ball, clearing the best way for inexperienced areas or new improvement.

“We received’t want avenue parking, we won’t need parking structures that a lot, and we definitely received’t want below-grade parking buildings,” says Andy Cohen, Los Angeles-based co-CEO of Gensler, a world structure agency.

Mr. Cohen and different consultants say the demand for city parking areas will plummet in coming years on account of a number of traits.

Shifting demand

The rise of autonomous ride-hailing autos and micro-mobility devices such as electric bikes and e-scooters will play a key function, they are saying, as will lower rates of car ownership among Gen-Z and millennials. As well as, cities have been shifting away from minimal parking necessities that in some instances compelled builders to construct extra sq. footage per automobile than per workplace employee. And remote work and on-line procuring—each traits that accelerated through the pandemic—imply fewer journeys downtown for workplace staff and customers.

“That’s going to vary parking demand considerably, and within the close to time period, lengthy earlier than you get to shared electric autonomous vehicles,”

Mary S. Smith,

senior vp on the parking and mobility consulting agency Walker Consultants, says of the decline of commuting into city facilities. By 2040 or 2050, she predicts, parking demand in metropolis facilities might fall to round 30% of pre-pandemic ranges—nearer to fifteen% if hybrid workweeks grow to be the norm.

“There’ll all the time be a necessity for parking, it doesn’t matter what autos are driving us round sooner or later,” says

Robert Zuritsky,

president and chief government of Parkway Corp., a Philadelphia-based parking and real-estate firm. However he calls the post-Covid period “a giant experiment” given the shift to hybrid work schedules.

A multipurpose mobility hub

The prospect of urban streets bustling with shared roving robotaxis or different autonomous autos has spurred Gensler to design workplace buildings with parking services that may simply be repurposed—although that raises front-end prices by as much as 15% for options like greater ceilings.

To read more, visit WSJ here