“Central City” is a term invented for this map to encompass the densest, most centrally located, and most valuable real estate in a metropolitan area. This provides an estimate of all usable land within the Central City boundary. To find the developable land area of a “Central City”, we calculated 75% of the entire Central City boundary area, excluding 25% for roads and sidewalks. We will update all parking lots periodically when new satellite photos become available. For cities with limited mapping, we manually added parking lots using Google Maps satellite imagery, ensuring the data is as current as the latest Google Maps satellite images. The aim was to identify all land primarily meant for parking cars. To do this, we used OpenStreetMaps to gather parking information in our focused “Central City” region, excluding underground and podium parking. We calculated the percentage of land used for parking in the “Central City” by dividing the total parking area by the estimated developable land area. How was “Percent of Central City Devoted to Parking” Calculated? Examples include Arlington (TX), Aurora (CO), Henderson (NV), and others. Suburbs: Suburban cities often lack a large established downtown and are often primarily residential in nature with a strong reliance on the core city.Examples include Long Beach (CA), New Haven (CT), and Fort Worth (TX). These cities lack regional dominance in their urbanized area in terms of population and employment. Principal City: These cities are typically located near a larger core city and have a significant relationship with it, often functioning as a supporting or complementary urban area.Examples of core cities include Albuquerque (NM), Atlanta (GA), Chicago (IL), Dallas (TX), Los Angeles (CA), and many others. San Francisco has a smaller population than San Jose because of its small city borders but has a substantially larger employment base than San Jose. These cities are often the largest in their CSA, but not always. They often serve as economic, cultural, and administrative hubs. Core City: These are the main or central cities within their respective Combined Statistical Areas (CSA).This scoring system was created to evaluate cities on an equal basis and should not be used outside of this context. Conversely, a high score translates to more land dedicated to parking compared to the median for a city in an urbanized area of that size. We also lack a sufficient sample size of principal cities and suburbs to provide an accurate score.Ī low parking score means the city devotes much less land in its central area to parking than the median. This is because principal cities lack dominance in an urbanized area and can’t be compared efficiently with core cities.
Principal cities and suburbs were excluded from the parking score. The difference was then converted into a number between 1-100. The parking score for core cities was created by taking the difference between a city’s parking percentage and the median parking percentage of the ten urbanized areas closest in population to the urbanized area of the city being scored. We separated all cities with an urbanized area population of over 500 thousand people into different population categories, as found below. Parking Score measures how a city’s parking lot land use compares to other cities of a similar urbanized area population and city type. Methodology What does “Parking Score” mean? This revelation underscores a clear truth: to foster densely walkable cities, we must prioritize accessibility over excessive parking. Public transportation not only enables the utilization of urban space but also enhances its value. Our research indicates that the percentage of land taken up by parking decreases as the percentage of individuals who opt for public transportation, walking, or biking as their primary commuting methods increases. With all this parking, little land was left for anything else, making housing more expensive, less dense, and farther apart.ĭepicts all Core Cities with an Urbanized Area Population over 1 Million As a result, our cities became covered in a sea of parking spaces, parking lots, and parking structures. Over the past century, cities have increasingly relied on cars for transportation, leading to the implementation of minimum parking requirements mandating that all new developments have abundant free parking. Public Transportation enables Urban Density: What makes a great city? For many, one key component is walkability, which is becoming increasingly scarce in the United States. # map ] // Initialize mapkit and create a new map.