WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley This is the Cali Crossley Show. We're talking about the parking lot and how it shapes our urban landscape. It's the subject of MIT Professor Ron been jealous of his new book Rethinking a lot a book that looks at the peculiar institution that is American parking. Today there are three non residential parking spaces for every car. In cities like Orlando and L.A. parking lots are estimated to cover one third of the city's space. As Joni Mitchell puts it in her song Big Yellow Taxi They paved paradise and put up a parking lot for the design and functional parking lots from the strip malls to the office parks have not been resigned since the 1950s. So is it time to push the parking lot into the 21st century to turn them into beautiful public spaces that are also environmentally and architectural a sound. Up next. A lot. To think about. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying A Texas man is getting

20 years in prison for trying to supply GP s equipment and other materials to al Qaeda. Barry Walter Bushell is also being ordered to pay a $10000 fine. He was sentenced today in Houston several months after he was convicted of attempting to offer support to a foreign terrorist organization. We schall a U.S. citizen was also found guilty of aggravated identity theft. The 31 year old was arrested two years ago after he used a fake ID to sneak on board a ship bound for the Middle-East United Nations investigators are accusing troops and rebels in the Syrian conflict of serious human rights abuses on both sides. In a report released today the U.N. team says government forces killed entire families and armed revolutionaries kidnapped and tortured their prisoners. Syria has been in the grip of unrest for more than a year during which thousands have died in their attempt to topple the Assad regime. Astronauts onboard the International Space Station got a chance to see the private

unmanned Dragon spaceship launched on Tuesday. Images taken by the station's cameras. Show the capsule looking like a small dot as it flies about a half about a mile and a half that is under the outpost. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports that today's close flyby allowed controllers to run important tests. NASA's astronaut Don Pettit was talking to Houston's Mission Control when he suddenly said that he had spotted dragon. I'm going to look at Dragon right now. We copy Tallyho on Dragon that's great. Station astronauts successfully sent a command to Dragon telling the capsule to turn on a strobe light. That was a key milestone because the crew will need to be able to communicate with Dragon during tomorrow's planned docking the first time a private spaceship will visit the outpost. Nell Greenfieldboyce NPR News. MasterCard has been overcharging for cross-border transactions in Europe. That's the ruling from one of the European Union's highest courts but as

Teri Schultz tells us the credit card giant is rejecting that decision. MasterCard Europe has been told by an EU court it may not charge retailers extra fees when their customers make purchases with credit or debit cards from another country. The cross-border charges called interchange rates are unlawful and anti-competitive the court ruled dismissing MasterCard's appeal of the 2007 decision in favor of the European Union EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin El Mooney A suggest that Europe take note. He's previously said he's considering the same kind of case against visas credit card fees. There's already been a settlement on charges for the use of debit cards MasterCard says the ruling places an unfair burden on its side and it will lodge a second appeal. For NPR News I'm Teri Schultz in Brussels. Dow was down 25 points NASDAQ off 16 at last glance. This is NPR. Good afternoon from the WGBH radio newsroom in Boston I'm Christina Quinn with some of the local stories we're following. The Massachusetts Senate has put aside an effort to expand the bottle deposit law to

include plastic water bottles and other types of non carbonated beverage containers. Senators instead voted during a budget debate on Wednesday to study the issue further with Republican Robert Hendley Hedlund sponsor of the amendment to expand the current redemption law. Backers say it would improve the environment by reducing the number of discarded containers littering roadsides and clogging landfills. Meanwhile critics say expanding the list of beverage beverages subject to deposit would amount to a consumer tax that would hurt smaller businesses that would have to handle increased returns and state senators have voted to close a loophole in the state's drunken driving law so that cases continued without a finding are now counted as a conviction. The state's highest court recently ruled that people who admit to sufficient facts but are not technically convicted of drunken driving cannot be considered first time offenders under meant under Melanie's law. The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that motorists who admit there's enough evidence for a drunken driving conviction but aren't convicted are not subject to certain increased penalties. The Hannaford supermarket chain says all seafood sold in its 181 stores in the northeast is now documented as sustainable. The Scarborough Maine based chain says under its new policy it

documents all seafood products is coming from fisheries governed by effective science based management plans and efforts George Parmenter told Maine Public Broadcasting Network the policy has resulted in the removal of about 50 seafood products from its stores all from overseas suppliers. Right now we have scattered clouds in the Boston area at 69 degrees and at 77 in Worcester with overcast skies in Providence mostly cloudy at 72 degrees. Tonight we can expect a slight chance of showers with highs in the mid 70s with overnight lows rather overnight lows in the upper 50s Friday will be mostly cloudy with a chance of showers in the morning then partly sunny afternoon highs in the mid 70s Support for NPR comes from Ally Bank who value straightforward reporting and straightforward banking. Learn more about Ally Bank at bank dot com. I'm Christina Quinn you'll find more news at WGBH news dot org. Good afternoon I'm Kalee Crossley. Today we're talking about parking lots and some innovative approaches to rethink them. Why. Because parking lots cover huge

swaths of our urban landscape. And for all the space they take up their design and function lacks a lot of imagination. Joining me to talk about how we can push the parking lot into the 21st century is Iran bin Joseph. He's a professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at MIT. His new book is rethinking a lot the design and culture of parking. Welcome. Thank you Kelly wonderful being here. Well I want to go back way back to where your book begins really to be. Tell us about the evolution of parking and what I learned is that the history of parking started with animals. Tell us about that. That's correct. If you think about it when before we had cars most people use horses or donkeys or carts to move around and we can go back all the way to Assyrian time or even Roman time to see how the rulers of those nation tried to control the use of the street of the roads.

And at that time we find the first kind of regulation in terms of how and where to deal with your animal where to park it where to put it how to deal with issues such as the waste that comes from those quote unquote vehicles and so on. So that's as early as we know. And then if we go a little bit more to not as present time but about 400 years ago so we can find some of the first rules particularly in the United States in New York City in terms of dealing again with the control of animals in the in the public spaces which were of course the streets of that time. So then talk about leaping ahead in time when the word park was first used to describe putting your animals. Gathering them in one place out of the way. Again that's an interesting. When I first started to look at that issue of parking lot I tried to figure out why do we have the word park in parking. And of course it goes back again to the time where again animals were contained in a fenced area and at that time particularly in England the use of the word really

implies to contain livestock or animals and then slowly it was used for the expression in terms of storing particularly military equipment. So and most specifically artillery and again the word in the military jargon for parking their artillery was used for the first time. And then we slowly start seeing it again in terms of the evolution of the word. It is a place where you would store vehicles carts and so on. So again that's kind of an interesting element to it and again the word park probably comes from the fact that initially there were animals in there and it was green and it was fancy and of course also we know that in terms of landscape architecture some of the first parks that were designed were indeed fenced in only the privileged could access them. Ah. So now we keep going home time warping and forward and now we have the parking lots that we know about.

And I really honestly hadn't thought much about a parking lot and except when I'm frustrated in trying to find a parking spaces. Many of us have had that experience. So this book as beautiful as it is to talk about what is essentially an ugly space space as you yourself as a scape architect would know. So how do we get to the place where this space is just so ugly. Well that's a good question I'm not sure I have the answer but that's what I tried to do in this book and I think just as you mentioned such a simple question is exactly where was my departure for the book. If we had a TV we could pan the camera outside this window and look across the street and we have a great example of a great parking lot I want to mention. If I have a business that is associated with this parking lot but this is exactly what I was interested in. First of all you know I teach as you mention in an urban planning landscape architecture and many of my students always ask why are again those parking lot so ugly.

And if we have to actually teach some of our students how to design those parking lots. I always kind of scratch my head and try to figure out if there are actually good examples that can be given in terms of case studies and there were very few of those. So the question is why are parking lot ugly or why are there not as a statically pleasing A goes back again poorly for the fact that many of the parking lots are actually not regulated in terms of the landscape features. If you look at some of the zoning ordinances in places even like Boston or Cambridge and some of the more progressive cities in terms of the design of our environment the actual controls of regulations are code to try to specify how to design the internal part of the parking lot often not there. Now that's also an interesting element because in some cases you might argue that if a place is not as controlled and not as. Regulated at some other places you could give the freedom for the designer for the planner or for the landscape architect to do some wonderful things so from that point it is a little

bit of a Catch 22 I would say for myself because if we had actually have the good opportunity and the right again professionals dealing with parking lots then the issues of just efficiency of storing the cars is not the only purpose of the place but you could also look at it as a place to provide for other purposes that could actually meet a gate for some of the environmental conditions that actually even be beautiful and will accommodate also some of the more I guess technological and specific needs and the requirement for parking itself. I am talking with MIT Professor Ron bin Joseph and we're talking about his book Rethinking a lot the design and culture of parking. And there's a lot to say about the culture of parking We'll get to that in just a second. In the meantime we want you to join the conversation at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 seventy 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Call in with your parking gripes. Now you've just heard the professor say no. He thought about how ugly these parking lots are or even their functionality. So call in and tell us about a parking

lot that works for you. Or to report a parking lot that could use a 21st century make over that number 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. And you can write to our Facebook page or send us a tweet at Kelly Crossley. So here's the thing that I found so fascinating reading your book. It's as though everything else with regard to land and space in the city is aggressively zoned regulated. Somebody has a say about how it looks. And then you get to the parking lots like yeah whatever. I just don't get that. That's right. I don't know if I get it either. So usually there are requirements about parking lot tends to be them out of cars that you need to store and where the car should enter or exit. And in some places and some other locations for example there might be other stipulation for example in California and other places we see now some requirements in terms of landscaping. Particularly shading of the parking lot and that's a

good move especially in the fact that with the fact that if you have a paved area surface and there's so much of the heat island effect that created and the rise of the temperature you do want to cover the parking lot with trees so we see some of that is actually happening in other places. Some of the landscape requirement would be to for example screen the parking lot from the street as if again because of the acknowledgment that it is so ugly so at least if we walk in the street you want to see those cars. And one of the things that again I try to push in the book and through my talks in teaching is that that integration should happen more seamlessly within the parking lot and not just think about it is such an eye sore that we need to you know away hide it. We should all acknowledge that most of us use the car. Most of us still get to work with the car and we need to park it and in a way integrating that sequence of both driving and then getting out of the car and walking into our destination should be actually a pleasant situation and not necessarily somewhere where you either have to fight to get a parking space or fight against the cars when you actually become a pedestrian.

So what is the typical parking lot because now we know that nobody is paying attention to it or I've learned from from reading your book. The typical parking lot in Anywhere USA is what does it look like. How many parking spaces eccentrics as well as Foley most of the listeners know it. It is typically an asphalt paved area. That if we are lucky we will see some trees that are covering few of the spots in some other places again if we're lucky in terms of the design itself that will be actually a pedestrian walkway leading to the destination. But as I said in most cases it would be really comprised of the dimension that are required to park what we call a parking stall where you park actually the car itself and the drive area where you actually drive both to get to the parking space and where you back out of it. And those are really the dimensions that basically defined the space itself. And then we have what was called the parking requirements in terms of the numbers of parking spaces that are

that have to be allocated in the space itself and those usually are driven by what we call Parking demands of those firm formulas that are generated by various professional Transportation engineers of the city itself that says it for a particular land use of a particular square footage of a building we have to provide such and such amount of parking. And of course that of course that will be you know somewhat controversial in terms of. Where are those numbers coming from and some people you know where are they coming from. Well that's supposedly from the surveys and actually looking at how the measuring you know the type of trouble you call traffic generation of that particular land use. But many people have challenged that and said that often those numbers are not as accurate of course in other places such as commercial or retail. The establishment itself would want to sometimes have more parking than needed. Particular if they design it for the peak shopping days of the year. So even though the parking lot might not be full of the year they would like to have enough

spaces during those those days usually they like around Christmas time that only after Thanksgiving and again the question is even if we have to provide those spaces and designed this parking lot can some of it be designed a bit differently. I always like to say can you think about a great parking lot I would love to hear from me or from your listeners if they know if a great parking lot just like we might say there are some great streets like Newbury streets of Boylston Street or are there wonderful streets that we know do we really have a great parking lot it could be as an example of how those spaces could be designed. Well much like the whole buck series vs. briefs controversy angle vs. straight in I mean what did the landscape architects urban planners say is best and let me give this number out one more time. 8 7 7 3 1 8 9 7 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Professor Ron Ben Joseph would like to know if you have a favorite parking lot that works well. I know many of you have parking lots that don't work well I have one myself which I'll mention

later but call in or send us a Facebook message or a tweet at Kelly Crossley. So angle parking versus straight in so the geometry of the stores themself in the parking usually is something that comes out from the amount of space that you have in terms of the designing of the parking lot if it is an angle parking then you get less spaces but there with over the parking lot could be much shorter because the backup space is less than if you are in a 90 degree so some of this geometry has to do with the site itself and the configuration. There is more of a story about the angle parking or the Parlow parking or the diagonal parking and so on. With regard to street parking its kind of interesting you know if you look at some of the streets that are wider. Not so much in terms of the parking lot themselves. Of course most of the parking today is done in parallel parking but in some other places where the street is wide enough there have been a diagonal parking. And again to allow for more capacity in some places that has been changed because of

issues of safety where people say well if you back into the traffic it could be dangerous will though we now see some other streets that are some some towns that are Got getting back into what we call back in into the angled parking so you go back with the back of the rear of the car first and then it's easy to merge into traffic. Interestingly enough historically that goes back again also in the idea of a curb parking goes back again to horses and wagons if you look at some of the kind of Western movies and you see how people used to tie their horses wagons they used to kind of almost parking in a par little diagonal and that kind of when people start driving of course it went back again into the car in the same format. All right let's take a call. Larry from Mansfield Go ahead please year on the Cali Crossley Show. Eighty nine point seven WGBH are the common live in Germany. You're right there are many off our stop park were quite beautiful and

functional they used what they had about and the creamy star studded short press well manicured grass in between this book. Is it a walk on. Very good I mean you know going back to your quarters. Well Larry thank you for the call you must have read rethinking a lot. Professor Jones his book because he does mention Germany as a place where innovation is happening in parking lots talk to us about that. Yes definitely Thank you Larry. This is correct I mean and we and I should I should also say that we do see some of those kind of parking lots also appearing in the United States again. In Europe we seek great examples of fusing different types of materials integrating the parking lots more into the kind of urban fabric where really we and that's what a little bit of what I argue in my book is this. Those spaces could be seen almost as urban plazas and where you design them differently both in terms of their state of the material we actually put some

effort and spend some money to actually improve those. They look beautiful and they also are a media gate as I said before some of the environmental consequences so for example if you use interlocking pavers or use porous material or other types of material it is not just a statically pleasing but it also deals quite a bit with storm water runoff where you actually can percolate some of that water into the ground in the space where it falls rather than what we have right now which is impervious surfaces asphalt and most of it runs. Into the streets or into the gutters and then into our water system into rivers. So indeed in Europe there are some wonderful examples in the book I mention one example which is in Italy actually a project by Renzo Piano it's in the lead up to the factory where he actually took a large parking lot and integrated as part of the buildings both in terms of material but also in thinking about how the workers comp park in that area and actually move into the building. Also in the United States now with a lot of the environmental regulation particularly with regard to storm water management and storm water runoff we starting to

see more and more places that are using quite innovative materials and actually also trying to implement that as part of their stakes. So. You know you've asked me before why some of the parking lots are all so ugly one of it is definitely an issue of cost when there are no regulations or when a developer or real estate project does try to put most of the funding and the cost into the building and then very little is left in the parking so of course paving it with asphalt planting through three trees and couple of shrubs that's that as much as there is they will do. But if they actually acknowledge that parking lot is an integral part of the building is what I call the first place you come into a project the last place you live and the places where those developers or if it is even retailers could spend some more attention to than Indeed we can create some wonderful places. All right much more with Professor as we continue our conversation. I'm Kelly Crossley we're talking about the peculiar institution that is parking with a focus

on parking lots. My guess is a Run Ben Joseph his new book is rethinking a lot the design and culture of parking. You can join us at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. How would you like to see parking lots redesigned for the 21st century. What parking lot would you nominate for an innovative make over 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. The conversation continues on WGBH Boston Public Radio. This program is made possible thanks to you. And New England Subaru featuring the

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Whole Foods Market is getting real and whole foods is why I got my seal of the week yes you know what the mom told me about it. He's full. Of them. Welcome back to the Kelly Crossley show you here just to get we're talking about parking lots those large sometimes ugly underuse plots of land that take up huge swaths of our urban landscape. And that could use an innovative make over I'm joined by MIT Professor Ron Ben Jealous of his new book is rethinking a lot the design and culture of parking. You can join the conversation at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 seventy 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Or you can write to our Facebook page or send us a tweet at Kelly Crossley. So now we've been talking about what makes a good space and it's not just having space really you've got to really think about it. And if businesses of corporations or cities really thought about it as part of the landscape as just and not just an effort afterthought they would look differently. I happen to know you drove here today so that you could check out the WGBH parking

lot. So what do you think a lot of improvement. You know unfortunately I've got a beautiful building. But when you enter the parking lot you kind of have to go all the way. So they hear you here I am as a guest I'm entering this parking lots in the back of the building I have no clue where the entrance is or there's a little sign that says entrance over here and then you enter this beautiful lobby. Great chair so why not integrate that area as part of the sequence of actually arriving through this wonderful great building. Well right there you heard it. So the folks at GBH. Judy from Boston Go ahead please you're on the callee Crossley Show. Eighty nine point seven. Hi. I'm just I just want to say I'm so happy that somebody is directing that. It's been an eye sore ever since I can remember. Oh did we lose you. Judy you still there you're coming in and out a lot. Yeah. Got to keep going. Oh OK. Pony in the parking lot.

PROFESSOR RON bin Joseph says you're probably in a parking lot and we lost you. But anyway I heard the gist was she was glad that someone such as yourself is really giving it the thank you very much attention because you know we really don't think about it yet thank you this is I think my purpose was to write this book and to reach the general public more than I think professionals and public officials although I think that's important too but there's there are books that deal kind of more with the professional side of parking and how you design it and in a way I would Sedley would say that they're not succeed in terms of improving maybe a little bit incrementally but you know way of doing a book that is a bit more popular in terms of kind of looking at parking and hopefully as people read it or at least think about it they will not see parking lot in the same light again and the change will happen by by paying more attention to it. Brian from West Roxbury Go ahead please you're on the Calla Crossley Show eighty nine point seven. I just reiterate what the previous caller said I'm glad somebody you know. Addressing this issue I think it doesn't take a lot of work to make the parking lot more pleasant and a

stronger more pleasant. It has about examples of good parking lots. I think up beautiful example is the parking lot in downtown Boston that post office where that used to be a four five storey above ground holding mass. And they redid it and put it underground at a park on top and it's a beautiful beautiful little urban park and had a very well run parking lot underneath it. Beautiful. Do you ever stop to you know take a moment to appreciate it. Absolutely yeah that and a lot of people do it's a very popular spot or you know for lunch time and I think it even made it into. I've seen it in a couple of movies even it's a really beautiful park. Thank you so much for the call Brian. You're welcome. I saw a professor that brings me to a huge party a book which is really to talk about the culture of parking for Americans and parking lots for Americans. Talk about that if you will about how much this often ugly space is really so much a part of being American.

That's right. It's kind of interesting story in itself because when I first started to write this book My intention was to write more as I said kind of a case studies about the design of the parking lot really looking at it from the more planning design side. How do you design the surfaces but I didn't think as much about the actual use and the culture that is often involved in the use of the parking lot and as I was starting to do my research I started to get more and more interested in the other side in a way how for example people behave in parking lots as I say as I mentioned before if you think about yourself and most of us do drive sometimes so when we actually look for a space we behave very differently there's a certain aggression you know and we want to find the closest parking spot next to the entrance and we sometimes will circle for five minutes to find a closer larger longer instead of just parking a little bit far away and walk. And then when we get out of the car and we become pedestrian we become hostile towards the other drivers because we feel quite and rightly so in many cases that we are in danger of

somebody backing. And running over us and of course if you have children you are mortified that your kids are going to run behind cars that are backing. And then. And then there are the stories you kind of remember most of us I think remember about our youth and the time we spent in a parking lot maybe not as observed by our parents of our adults and and the things we do there and it's kind of I thought well that's an interesting phenomena because there is an importance to any urban environment to those kind of places that are a little bit maybe less design less controlled and allow for a somewhat somewhat of a spontaneous behavior. The other thing is that the parking lot itself many parking lots are actually empty during for example the weekend if there are in an urban location. And what you start hearing and of course everybody have seen and many people have seen the use of parking lot is flea markets or farmer's market during the weekend. But also you start seeing people play sports sometimes soccer basketball particular in urban areas where open space is not as available. And so as I was

researching and people would tell me all the stories about this wonderful activities. I got intrigued and so part of the book is also covering I called it kind of the culture of parking. I learned to drive. My dad taught me to drive in a parking lot that was in the empty you know early in the morning on weekends so as very fond memories of that. You know my dad holding his heart when I was trying to navigate the parking lot so it really is so intricate to American culture because cars are of course and so that you know the parking of cars and becomes as much a part of that whole scene and of course you know people love to show their cars there's all these car shows or people bring their antique cars and we see that on the weekend and they show them in parking lots. There are people who park in parking lots there is this thing called boon docking Yeah I want to talk a little bit to the Wal-Mart people who are actually the docking which of course comes from kind of more military. Again military terminology but has been adopted by

people who drive with RV and Wal-Mart allows them to park overnight in the parking lots and they camped there and it's in a way free but they also shop in the parking lot in the shop in the Wal-Mart that is associated with that parking lot. So again there's a kind of a culture I mean there is the. What we called a parking lot peakers which of course going to bluegrass music and they love to get into a parking lot tailgating which is of course very much of an American culture phenomena where people are just sitting in the parking lot before games and having a good time. So the car and the parking lot again an important kind of connection. And in the instance of the boon docking this is a case where consumers have have caused the change. So Wal-Mart became aware of the fact that people were using these parking their big air streams there and by the way Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a boondock that Wal-Mart gets a lot of people are doing it and they just made space and that created a different kind of community. Yeah.

So we've seen that adaptation which is part of what you're doing let's take another call. Peter from Billerica Go ahead please you're on the callee crackly show. Eighty nine point seven I was ball less wonder the aesthetics and more under the doing more Celestion the urban area. I live about 30 miles north of Boston and Spaulding Rehab Hospital down there it looks like what they did was they expanded their building but then they have a limited amount of space they couldn't expand the parking for the new employees so they basically stack park. Oh yea they have these metal I want call metal I've never actually touched the metal stacks and basically the first car pulls in it's lifted up above. Above and then somebody else pulls in under them. I don't really know how they how they handle like Let's talk to the screen how they handle getting the second car down if it's necessary maybe they keep the keys from the first one but I just thought you know I passed it when I go into the city and I always think that's it. It's

weird. It just looks weird because I've never seen it before so you've never actually had a car in there you just observed it. I have never parked and it is for the facility the hospital Parkers. I'm guessing All right well let me let the professor respond thank you so much Peter for the call. Professor have you heard about that. Yes of course. Thanks Peter for mentioning that so of course we see and I think it goes back again to also what Brian mentioned terms of post office Square which of course is an underground parking. And then there's a park on top which is a wonderful solution but as I often stress in my book there are parking lots that are underground there are parking garages and there's a surface lot from my intention I was more interested in the kind of more than one danger surface. But we do see indeed in places where parking becomes more expensive and where the land becomes more expensive and you want to utilize and gate greater efficiency then we start seeing other innovation one of those is this metal structure that you can indeed park cars one on top of the other. It works that Manhattan has a lot of those for example where again it's a CD which is

much more dense and the parking is very expensive. It works well where you come in you. You have it. Somebody will take your keys for example and actually keep track of the cars and again if you don't use or need the car for the whole day but you come to work in let's say 9 and 9 and leave at 5 then they can actually stack that because you don't need access to a car so those work very well for places that have parking that are mainly for workers. But if you are talking about a shopping mall for example or an I ne other situation would people need access to the car or the comm and shop on a regular basis then you then these kind of McKinney ism doesn't work as much. All right this is a perfect segue into my next guest joining us on the line is Jason Schreiber He's a principal at Nelson Nygaard where one of the things he focuses on is the cost of parking. He also looks at how to create a better balance between cars and other modes of transportation. Jason Schreiber thank you for joining us.

Hi Kelly and hi aren't I Jason. So as you know we've been talking about surface parking lots in ways that are not working well and some innovative designs. And what you are addressing are really curb side parking and to some extent garages there's a little bit of a parallel there. And about how cities if they pay attention because it comes back to what the professor said at the beginning often this is the last thing that cities are paying attention to are communities or businesses. And there is an efficient way for us to park an innovative way that would allow for really a better return for both the consumer and the city. Yeah we usually find that parking is sort of the the third rail of politics in many downtowns it's the thing that people like to complain about the most and try to solve policed and they look at the regulations that we do in our communities whether we put it meters whether we've got lots of enforcement as the evil sticks more or less that tries to move people around and usually not very well.

There's been a lot of communities that have started to try to change how they treat parking isn't it more as a tool for economic development and recognize that an available parking space at the front door and the closest parking lot or garage is far more valuable to them than having it filled up with regulations that let people park there all day or can feed a cheap meter. You see this happen in a lot of cities. Where it's just very cheap to park on street you can't find a space on the street you circle around all day and you're forced to go into a higher priced garage. Well that's where downtown you know that is has a lot of surface parking sometimes these prioritize what it's doing with those spaces. In fact you've made the radical statement I'm going to say it's radical that people see curbside parking as free but it should be considered that way. No absolutely not I mean if you really think about it too. It's sort of like a commodity. So the front door spaces right out front of the shop you want to visit are the most valuable spaces. The last place you want to park is

back in the lot or in the top deck of a garage and sometimes those are often more expensive. In a place like Boston where it's a lot of parking demand there's a few cities afoot that around San Francisco's got this well-known national project where they're trying to make it more expensive to park on the street. And it's worked pretty well a lot of people have reacted strongly there's not many local examples Nashua New Hampshire has started to do this just recently and the merchants have actually responded really positively because they see the customers getting their front door parking spaces even if they're more expensive and the employees can go park more remotely where it's cheaper. So your your theory is if you have to pay more to be right in front of where you're trying to shop say then you're willing to pay more to do that and there'll be more of a turnover for the business businesses than less because if it's not as expensive then you take the risk that somebody just parking there but they're not particularly patronizing that business. That's something we've seen lots of downtowns and I'm sure and some mayor ship's

work he's a professor at UCLA has done a lot of writing his book The high cost free parking talks a lot about it but you'll see this in a downtown we're going to study and you can see the merchants or their employees parking out front where the customers should be maybe on the front of their business usually for their neighbors. And a customer who had come in is only staying for you know 30 minutes an hour even if the. The price is a dollar two dollars or more an hour. It may only cost them a couple quarters if they're buying an $80 pair of running shoes to get that space up front be a lot more valuable employee taking up the parking space. Well I think it's worked also in other instances I'm going to refer and maybe you're aware of this that there's a community garage in Harvard Square has been there forever is also very reasonably priced that price of parking and that garage has leapt up through the heavens now. So I used to go and sit and you know wait and pray for somebody to pull out and it was great. Now rarely have I gone to maybe I make a pass through there once but somebody is coming out of

there because it is expensive. Oh it's working I guess on a small scale. There's a lot of places that have ultimately seen this happen and it's really the private sector that has figured out the most I mean you come into downtown Boston the garages in the Fiat financial district are very high priced. A caller referred earlier to the post office square garage which is incredibly high priced because it's prime property. Yeah you go over it's a little bit further away into Chinatown it's a little bit cheaper you go back up to the back bay it gets really expensive again. But the public sector we haven't figured it out as much. Actually Chicago's a good example where they have the private sector come in and start running their public system and immediately they started pricing based on demand and the price in the loop in downtown Chicago now is over $6 an hour to park on the street and they still haven't cleared the market there's not much demand. So is it happening in Boston is it going to happen around this area. What's what's been the response from what I think the Harvard Square.

Doing it you know square and even on every square the price might be able to be higher still sometimes hard to find a space that they're not in the community to run. That's right. OK very high enough. Yeah I think in Boston the city is very interested in trying to figure this out as many other cities are they look to places like San Francisco and Chicago even New York and D.C. are experimenting with this and recognize that there is a lot of value lost on the street. Not so much for the city coffers if they increased their meter rates. It's really actually to the businesses and the access for the customers and the convenience in that city where it's hard to find parking on the street may actually be discouraging commerce and encouraging people to go out to the suburbs where parking is cheaper or free. And it's in their best interest to kind of change that dynamic a little bit. 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. This is the Calla Crossley Show. We're talking about parking both parking lots

and about really charging more to park to make more space. Available for those who wish to park. My guests are our own bin Joseph. He and Jason Schreiber our own Been Joseph's new book is rethinking a lot the design and culture of parking and Jason Schreiber is a principal at Nelson Nygaard where parking and how we use transportation is among the many things he works on. Again our number is 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 8 9 7 8 7 7 3 0 1. Eighty nine seventy you can write to our Facebook page or send us a tweet. So now that we have examples clear examples in San Francisco and L other places. Jason I'm not certain I understand what the reluctance would be in any of these communities except to say that as in the case with Professor been jealous of it seems like these issues around parking are just like the last thing that anybody thinks of yet they're so central in many ways to American culture. So what's the sticking point. Why

can't we get off the dime if you will or the dollar. You know I don't feel like I mean the America the American love affair of the automobile era in the book really points out clearly has been dramatic. We've had such significant changes at least in policies and how we approach things. To accommodate driving and I think a long time ago when we first started trying to regulate the car coming into play it was like the first parking meters in the 20s. We became afraid to start doing just what we're talking about now and land use planning came into play on the assumption that we could build our way out of this problem by creating off street parking requirements which really expanded post war during the suburbanization presumed that a parking lot or parking garage was like a vacuum cleaner would suck all the cars off the street. In reality downtowns are always congested at the front door except where it's you know a little bit more costly and it's cheaper to park outback and it's very obvious that you can go out there. That generally

doesn't happen we haven't kept pace with the demand and if you look at the across the land and the Boston area I mean parking space on an average of three hundred foot parking a 300 square foot parking space is worth thirty thousand dollars and land value minimum in downtown Boston a few years ago something went for two hundred fifty thousand dollars I think when it was sold. But a lot of value locked up in the land and we're trying to think about formal housing or trying to think about commerce that Lantier can be used more efficiently but boy do we love the car. I fell in love in the car I'm in this is a question I asked Professor just a moment ago backed him on this because he's made it clear that it took four in a parking lot to be a good use of space it needs to really address environmental concerns as well as you know the needs of the consumer of this and for those of us who do love the car Americans. So the same thing with your proposals. Just to be clear it's a lucrative. It could be a lucrative for any city or or

business planning in this way but it also happens to bring some some innovation really to thinking about the environment in the way that this would work and you talk about that a little bit. Well I would I would say that the parking lot certainly has a lot of potential for working better in a downtown parking system. The problem I would say is the places we want to be and I would throw this at the professors that the places we want to be really engage with our communities are usually the sidewalk or the or the plaza there the front door Those are the really valuable spaces and while a parking lot if I was pricing it would cost just a little bit less and maybe a little bit more than a further remote garage or something. It's also not my number one concern for making lots of improvements. I would certainly agree there's some bad parking lots and we've been really bad at getting in

landscaping and best management practices and safe walkways and. And we all forget every motorist is a pedestrian when they get out of a car they step out of the parking lot and there's no walkways in most parking lots there's. There's a scary if not dangerous in many regards I've got little kids and they're smaller than the bumpers and half the vehicles out there and when you have to drive it's a dangerous environment. But yet that's not the place I want to that hang out. I really would prefer to crate the nice Plaza by the shops around the corner. All right. That's Jason Schreiber principal at Nelson Nygaard where parking and how we use transportation is among the many things he works on. Thank you so much for joining us. Perhaps a little. Take care. Thank you Jason. Now professor to that point. He's Jason just said I want to hang out on the parking lot but people are hanging out and there are now some innovative designs right here in town where people are combining both the car usage efficiently and the design as a community space.

Well I mean I can. Let me just also go back at what Jason said which I think is absolutely important I mean the only issue of parking demand parking ratio and parking cost are absolutely right on target. The thing is that most of that could be basically applied to downtown areas so when we look at San Francisco when we look at Boston places that they it was tried but what we do in places like Brighton What do we do in places than we that are in Kansas City what do we do in Los Angeles where there's not as good transit where things are spread and yes it is not just the part of the American love for cars but it's also the consequences of what we have done for the last. You know 70 years in terms of land use and it's not something that is going to change anytime soon. People don't have good transit when they leave in some of those other cities and they still rely on their car and they still have to get to work and they still have to park it and they will not use car parking they still have to put in transit right now is not something's going to happen for the first in the next 10 to 20 years in most of these of these cities so it's not that

I don't wish for that kind of solution where everybody takes trains or buses or ride bicycles but I think unfortunately we still will be relying on car as a means of transportation now in terms of seeing some some nice example I often refer to one of my favorite I guess it's not ideal it's not perfect but it has an interesting I think kind of design that it actually does act like a plaza and a place where cars are there too is the parking lot of Porter Square particularly in Cambridge and it's particularly the part that is close to mass. I think what you see there is a kind of a nice and interesting integration of the parking lot these very tight drivers usually hate driving they're getting there because the pedestrians are always crisscrossing both sides it has dimension it is much more I think tight than typical parking lot has nice at least as I said in the front part. Planting it has wide sidewalks next to the parking lot where actually there are tables and chairs

and people sit there and it's a nice day and have their coffee there's a bookstore at the corner there that is quite popular. So yes there are pluses but there plazas that are integrated within the fabric of the parking lot itself and as I said pedestrian there feel that they have almost the right of way and cars are inferior. So yes people find the parking and they're tight. They get out and they walk through the park and all the done the city need to find the the path that is designated for them because they feel that they have more kind of a priority and the space feel quite nice it also has a nice relationship to the street itself they have art there. Some people don't like the art itself but at least they try to acknowledge that there is kind of a plaza at the entrance to the parking lot. That kind of a concept come from again from Europe where they try to integrate cars and pedestrian together in spaces that they call a particle in the Netherland of one or four shared streets where there is actually no differentiation between cars and pedestrian and I know for some people it seems like a scary concept in a problematic one. The idea is that if you drive into a space that

has no dizzy can nation a separate designation for cars and pedestrian as a driver you feel like you enter a different space and actually behave psychologically very different and so those are kind of the things that can be that can be done. I give you my idea about my response to Porter Square on the way back. I'm callin crossly we're talking about parking parking lots and reinventing the parking lot. Innovative late. You can join us in 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 8 9 7 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. You're listening to WGBH Boston Public Radio. I'm just trying to find the disappeared for 20 minutes to get to the cheese counter. People just ran out search really don't take it. I try to tell myself I've been on edge and this is it took the brooch off the shelf to see the real Whole Foods Market last time I see you know we can't. All be this close right. These fools of. The Fourth Amendment said not right to me. You know that even with little shopping carts to get

you to say yeah it happens every day it's right it's how we live on the west side. Of life. This program is on WGBH thanks to you and UMass Memorial Health care and it's gynecologic surgeons providing minimally invasive and robotic techniques for cancer fibroids infertility and more. You can ask questions on line at UMass Memorial dot org slash GYN surgery. And Concord lamp and shade. We have customers coming to the store all of the time who will note that they heard our sponsorship on WGBH an Eckerd owner either their existing customers and were happy that we were sponsoring or their new customers who came in as a result of listening to the sponsorship and to learn how WGBH can benefit your business. Visit WGBH dot org slash sponsorship. I went down. The river. Watch the fish swim. That's Hank Williams from the soundtrack of the new Wes Anderson film Moonrise Kingdom and the next FRESH AIR we talk with Randall Poster music supervisor of that film and all of Wes

Anderson's founds. He's also chosen music for directors Martin Scorsese Todd Haynes and Richard Linklater join us. She's here on eighty nine point seven. WGBH. If you're looking for something that's cool and sweet and sprinkled with funk the WGBH Fun Fest is all that with a cherry on top. Saturday July 14th at WGBH in Brighton. It's a day hand packed with ice creamy goodness mixed up with PBS Kids characters swirl and some rides games music and more. It's enough to make you melt. Tickets will sell out and that's a sure bet. So don't get the whole scoop at WGBH dot org slash funfest while you still comb. Sorry can. Cut it. Welcome back to the gala concert show. If you're just tuning in we're having a parking lot party.

We're talking about parking parking lots and parking lot culture. I'm joined by MIT professor on bin Joseph his new book is rethinking a lot of the design and culture of parking. So Professor BN just before the break you talked about Porter Square in Cambridge being one of your favorite spots because it incorporated a lot of what you see. It's valuable I have to say as a driver there I hate it as a as a person that just enjoys the space when once I'm parked it's OK. But it's awful they took away the angle parking and put these tight little spaces. Awful awful awful. And it's a wonderful space to sit and enjoy all the rest of the stuff including There's an ice cream shop in there so you know they got to do something about that. You got to satisfy both sides of her. So you know we're coming to the end of this conversation and I can't let you go without talking about what can be done right now. Ideally for low cost some of our parking lots. Mirror what's happening in some of the other cities and towns across the world where their innovation is taking place and

where we can pay attention to the environment at the same time. So I think some of the easiest things that we can start doing is really pay attention as you said to the environmental consequences for example something as simple as increasing the landscape and increasing the Per of your surfaces not impervious but pervious surfaces whether it is to try to get more trees in the parking lot to take some spaces and actually turn them into what we call swells of air soft area where the actual the runoff can go from the surfaces themselves can accumulate and actually percolate into the groundwater and planting that's a very easy solution that I think even communities can do can organize doing it and they steadily will improve the space itself in the park and I think will would be a great benefit in terms of the environmental mitigation. So that's something that is easy and can be done both by communities and also by by store owners or even by municipalities if they actually want to increase their stakes and

actually meet a gate for some of that. Another thing is to let. Again communities use parking lots during off peak hours for other usages whether it is really in the weekend if people want to have a concert they want to have a party they want to have some kind of a market or even for playing sport putting basketball hoops in parking lots for example that are in a corner of a parking lot. That is not heavily used during the week and will allow kids to play there and that might be much closer sometimes to their homes than actually walking around or getting into a sports facilities that is quite far away. So there's a lot of stuff that we can be done and innovation can be just something sometimes a better idea so thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. We've been talking about parking with Iran Ben Joseph He's a professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at MIT. His new book is rethinking a lot the design and culture of parking. You can keep on top of the Calla Crossley Show at WGBH dot org slash Calla Crossley follow us on Twitter or become a fan of the callee

crossing show on Facebook. Today's show was engineered by Antonio only are produced by Chelsea Myers will Rose live and Abbey Ruzicka where a production of WGBH Boston Public Radio.