{"id":2049,"date":"2013-10-16T16:02:39","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T22:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/?p=2049"},"modified":"2013-10-17T00:56:48","modified_gmt":"2013-10-17T06:56:48","slug":"parking-dtyeg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/2013\/10\/16\/parking-dtyeg\/","title":{"rendered":"Parking DTYEG"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent maps of parking amenities in Winnipeg<\/a>\u00a0 and\u00a0Detroit<\/a>\u00a0got me thinking: what does downtown Edmonton’s current parking situation look like? Predictably downtown\u00a0Edmonton\u00a0is peppered with offsite parking. The vast majority of this supply is made up of mostly unwalkable, unsightly, dust devil generating surface parking. Admittedly, some<\/em>\u00a0parking is probably crucial to an active, vibrant core. But is downtown Edmonton’s parking supply to a point where it is choking out other key factors of activity and vibrancy?<\/p>\n

\"Downtown<\/a>
Downtown Edmonton parking amenities today.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To provide some context for how we got to this point, in the 1950s, the City of Edmonton was concerned that the downtown was deficient in parking supply. Deficiency in parking was viewed as a threat to economic activity downtown. Peter West, a local urbanist, notes, “There was panic with the rise of the automobile when street design and engineering was viewed as completely inadequate. New shopping centres such as Westmount offered vast free parking which was blamed when downtown businesses slumped. Parking was totally chaotic save for a handful of parking garages.” In 1952, a Downtown Parking Survey was conducted. Some of the key findings included the following:<\/p>\n