Don't Build Parking and They'll Come--Without Cars

This article comes to us courtesy of Robin Spilner, a volunteer with North by Northwest in Bethlehem.

The article makes a point that affects all urban areas, big and small: Parking is not as big of a problem as some may think. Many cities, in an attempt to accommodate the automobile or slow down development, have enacted stringent minimum parking requirements. The unintentional result of these requirements, however, is that businesses are driven away from urban areas since meeting these parking requirements is often too expensive or logistically not possible. Furthermore, one of the biggest strengths of cities is that they are walkable - accordingly, parking often goes unused because people walk or use mass transit to arrive at a location.

Locally, Alburits and Hellertown are in the midst of implementing parking changes that result from studies pursued by the BBRP. It will be interesting to see what changes we can enact.