

Between the Lines: LA parking spaces - davesailer
http://www.lamag.com/features/Story.aspx?ID=1568281

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byoung2
_The garage—designed to serve the public good—instantly made the Metro
immaterial to concertgoers, placed several thousand cars on the road every
week, and pumped a few hundred tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each
year._

I'm an LA native, and this is what I hate most about my city. There are
sections of the building code that literally mandate a minimum number of
parking spaces when you build a new building. When every building has plenty
of parking, everyone is expected to drive everywhere. As long as this is the
case, there is no incentive to improve public transportation.

~~~
mturmon
Here's another good quote:

"Single-car garages, hidden in backyards and alleyways in the early 20th
century, doubled in size by the 1970s and moved onto the front lawn once
cities began to require two residential spaces for every house."

The LA city requirement that new houses must have parking for two cars, side-
by-side, has pretty much made the only possible home layout like this:

[http://image.americanhomeguides.com/cgi-
bin/imagemgr/get_ima...](http://image.americanhomeguides.com/cgi-
bin/imagemgr/get_image?image=832bed1e1f4626ee5de7cee343be8dfe)

i.e., driveway straight up to garage, which is in front of house. This means
the front yard is half concrete, and every (new) house front is dominated by
the garage.

Even relaxing the requirement to allow tandem parking would be an improvement.

