Pavement In The Park

Urban park advocates struggle mightily to create new green space through a precious parcel here and an irreplaceable acre there. But a large swath of existing parkland is given over to the prosaic task of automobile storage, complete with its side impacts – impermeable surface, water runoff and erosion, oil and gas drippings, heat island effect, displacement of trees and meadows, loss of playing area.

A study by the Center for City Park Excellence of 70 major city parks in the U.S. reveals that, collectively, they devote a total of 529 acres to the very technology that many people seek to escape when they head into their local patch of nature. In Chicago, which recently spent $475 million to create 24-acre Millennium Park, almost twice that much land – 46 acres – is given over to auto storage within nearby Lincoln Park.

Of course, Americans assume they have the right to drive, one person per car, from home to a space directly next to a tennis court, rose garden or picnic table – at least until it's pointed out that 100 percent auto access means zero percent park. Despite the assumption, auto storage doesn't correlate directly with visitation. Parks aren't like shopping centers with a required number of spaces per unit of retail. The nation's most heavily-used park, Central Park in New York, has only 130 parking spaces yet gets 25 million visits per year. Prospect Park in Brooklyn, N.Y. receives six million visits while providing only 40 spaces for skaters at Wollman Rink – and that lot is open only periodically. On the other hand, in Houston, about 15 of Hermann Park's 445 acres are devoted to 2000 spaces for automobile storage (about 4.5 spaces per acre).

"On about 50 days per year there is no possible way to meet the demand, and on another 50 we're right at the limit for capacity," says Rick Dewees, administrator of the park. Nevertheless, he points out, "It's hard to add spaces when the lots are empty three-fourths of the time." Dewees has been forced to become a bit thick-skinned about the issue: "You're always going to have people complaining there isn't enough parking during peak times," he says.

There are four ways to reduce the problem of car storage in city parks. One involves an economic stick, three involve structural carrots. The article describes how charging for parking, increasing transit, increasing connections to parks, and increasing population density around parks can alleviate the need for automobile parking.

[Editors Note: This story links to a PDF document.]