Cars
While having access to a car may be good for our quality of life, so is driving less. As described in Theme 5a, there is much that we can do to encourage walking and cycling as an alternative. Eventually this will lead to lower levels of car ownership, but as a starting point we should aim for lower car use, which still leaves us with the matter of parking.
While having access to a car may be good for our quality of life, so is driving less. As described in Theme 5a, there is much that we can do to encourage walking and cycling as an alternative. Eventually this will lead to lower levels of car ownership, but as a starting point we should aim for lower car use, which still leaves us with the matter of parking.
Parking
The parking of cars can come to dominate housing areas, particularly in new development when the planners impose high parking requirements. The logic in
the past has been; ‘the occupants of this house could own X cars and so every house must have X dedicated car parking spaces’. Research by URBED looking at 400 largely suburban new housing schemes in Kent showed that the average number of parking spaces per unit was just over 2, while the average level of car ownership was just under 1.5 cars per household, and yet most of the residents surveyed on the estates still saw parking as their biggest problem. The suggested solution was to provide fewer spaces but to make them unallocated so that they could be used more flexibly.
The location of parking is also an important issue. The options are: on-plot (at the front or side of the house); on-street; or in a communal facility like a basement, a courtyard or ‘parking barn’. In suburban layouts, it is easy enough to accommodate parking on-plot, although these spaces cannot be used flexibly and take up valuable garden space. For high-density housing, a communal provision such as basement parking can work well, provided it is secure.
It is mid-density, terraced housing where parking can be a real problem. Parking in the front garden means you have to squeeze past the car to get to your house. Communal parking courtyards can work but raise problems of security, particularly when there is no direct access from the back garden. So, while it is understandable to want to remove on-street parking to allow streets to be used for other activities such as play, sometimes the street is the most flexible parking option. However, on-street parking should always be in defined parking bays and can be mixed with street trees and cycle parking.
What you can do
Communities
Work with the council to manage parking locally. Maybe take out spaces to provide a seating area or cycle store.
Developers and designers
Don’t provide more parking than you need to and ensure that as much as possible is unallocated. Design this parking to be as unobtrusive as possible, placing it for example towards the rear of commercial sites. Include on-street parking bays in new streets interspersed with street trees and other landscape features.
Councils
Consider your parking standards and guidelines: are they too high and how can they best be applied? Encourage more parking to be unallocated.
Case study
Movement: Icon and Houndwood Street, Somerset
The Icon neighbourhood is built on the original Clarks shoe factory site in Street, a Victorian industrial market town of 11,100 residents. The scheme accepts that many people need to use cars – particularly in a semi-rural location – but aims to integrate car parking in a more sensitive manner, creating a ‘shared space’ environment that provides equal rights for cars, pedestrians and cyclists.
Contact
Send us a message
Contact