Quote:
Originally Posted by rgarri4
Good lord that's a lot of parking! I guess that says a lot about the city its being built in.
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Yeah, remember that infamous Houston parking lot photo from the 1970s... the parking didn't go away, it just got piled up. If anything, downtown Houston probably has more parking than before. They built some light rail, but it's still only a realistic option for a tiny fraction of Houston's downtown commuters. Of course, the benefits of a full cityscape over a parking crater are significant, even if functionally the city is still an auto-oriented place. I'm sure downtown Houston is a lot more walkable and extensive than it used to be.
Not that Houston is unique in this, River North in Chicago was much the same way through the 1990s until the city instituted strict parking maximums for res/commercial development downtown and started requiring new standalone garages to get special zoning approvals. But Chicago can do this because of the already strong transit system, serving both the city and region.