Design for What? Third of Three Parts

A ten-story parking garage at 15th and Chestnut Streets in Center City (downtown) Philadelphia, as proposed by one condominium developer, is quite rightly controversial. Opponents argue that it would add more traffic to an already-congested corner and encourage people to drive to and around Center City, which in turn would generate more greenhouse gases and increase fuel consumption. On the other hand, supporters of the project argue, the city needs more parking to attract visitors from the suburbs who will not take public transit or walk long distances to get to events on the Avenue of the Arts (Broad Street), which is just around the corner from the proposed garage, or to Center City restaurants and other attractions. And the city needs the suburban visitors.

This is not an easy balance to strike. The city does need the visitors. But the city also needs to survive and thrive in an era when travel by private car will become more expensive and difficult than it is today—and when climate change will almost certainly force us to restrict our use of private cars. Market pressures and legal requirements make the situation even more problematic. In the short term, plenty of parking is a marketing plus; in the long term, easy access to public transit may be a selling point. And in the short term, city ordnances require off-street parking for large residential building projects. (The parking garage project began as a condominium project that could not generate funding—hence the inclusion of off-street parking in the original plan.)

Whatever city ordnances and market pressures may dictate, however, lack of parking is not the problem that the "more-parking-is-better" mantra makes it appear to be. A quick search of Center City using Google Maps shows that there are already at least 531 parking facilities in Center City. Some of them, including the parking lot that is currently at 15th and Chestnut, are surface facilities that eat up space and destroy the cityscape. Most are multi-story buildings, some with retail on the ground floor, others with nothing at street level but a blank wall. At 15th and Spruce Streets, just three blocks south of the proposed garage, there is an extraordinary structure half a city block square that consists of a large tavern with ten stories of parking on top—making it possible to drink and drive in one convenient stop.

If parking is not the problem in Center City, what is? The simplest answer is also the truest: jobs. The population of Center City is growing; the economic base is not. And a parking garage at 15th and Chestnut Streets will not reverse this trend. Even with retail stores on the ground floor, it will house fewer jobs than the building that occupied this space before a major fire destroyed it in the 1980s. The good of the city would be better served by commercial development on this site—ideally, retail on the ground floor, with no more than 10-12 stories of offices above it to fit in with the rest of the Chestnut Street corridor. The problem is attracting the jobs.

Philadelphia, it must be said, provides a difficult environment for business because of its eccentric tax structure and bewildering bureaucracy. In the long run, however, merely ending these barriers will do less for the city than a good development plan that balances commercial, residential, and transportation projects to maintain a vibrant, walkable center that people can reach without resorting to their cars.

Philadelphia is not the only city that needs planning like this. In the future that is coming, public transit will become more important. Walkable business districts will become vital. And living closer together in viable neighborhoods will be a necessity. We could choose not to move in these directions: to build more and more parking lots and big-box stores, let our public transit fall to pieces, and ravage our cities in the name of storing millions of private cars. If we do, the odds are against our having a long-term future at all. But we will have plenty of parking.