alt Hacker NewsIf you don't like parking you need to start with cars: give people a reasonable alternative. Too many are looking at this from a standpoint of "lets just get rid of parking" - without asking what people will do instead. All too often the answer is they will drive someplace in the suburbs instead where they get free parking.
If you want your downtowns to not have parking you need an alternative. In most cases that means you need to improve your transit in the entire city so people can get there.
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I think you have to start a step back from cars: the people buying them. At least where I live having a large (and getting larger) 4wd seems to be a source of identity for them, and integral to their lifestyle.
Many cities that have a dense core will have big municipal lots and garages to enable people to park somewhere they can walk from. Of course, the first thing urbanists go after is the presence of these lots in "high-value" real estate.
It's a chicken and egg problem. If you retain the parking but build transit, people will keep doing what they've always done. Partly because people are resistant to change, partly because the areas you can take transit to are still mostly parking lots.
Places like Los Angeles are grappling with 30+ years of investing in transit with minimal changes in modeshare, because they continued investing in automobility at the same rate.
The carrot is great, but we need the stick too.