Showing how much public land is dedicated to on-street parking in London
Introduction
'Be warned: you will never look at the street outside your front door in the same way
again'. This is a line from the blurb of 'Movement: how to take back our streets and
trasform our lives' (English translation)
by Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet. The book challenges the norm of
car-dependency in cities and makes extremely compelling arguments for rethinking the
role of streets as public space. Why should people
passing through in hugely damaging vehicles have unquestionable priority over residents,
pupils, or cyclists? Alongside 'Happy City' by Charles Montgomery, the Youtube channel
Not Just Bikes, and podcasts such
as Streets Ahead, this book has caused me to transform my view of city space, and the
role of streets and roads.
One topic frequently discussed in this space is how so much public space is dedicated to parking spaces. Empty cars surely take up more than their fair share of space in our cities, especially when we consider that this space is effectively subsidised by local councils to be much cheaper than the land value, if not completely free. With Paris's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, pledging to remove over 50% of the city's on-street parking spaces, the idea that cars should not have the right to be left all over our public spaces is no longer as radical as it might have once been.
I wanted to find out how much space is dedicated to on-street parking in London and show it in a meaningful way. The very informative article Reclaim the kerb: The future of parking and kerbside management by the Centre for London, tells us, amongst other things, that 'A simple calculation taking into account the size of a standard parking space shows that parked vehicles take up well over 14 km2 (1,400 hectares) of space on our roads and streets'. Using this figure I have shown the area on a map of London in different ways, and these are shown below.
One topic frequently discussed in this space is how so much public space is dedicated to parking spaces. Empty cars surely take up more than their fair share of space in our cities, especially when we consider that this space is effectively subsidised by local councils to be much cheaper than the land value, if not completely free. With Paris's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, pledging to remove over 50% of the city's on-street parking spaces, the idea that cars should not have the right to be left all over our public spaces is no longer as radical as it might have once been.
I wanted to find out how much space is dedicated to on-street parking in London and show it in a meaningful way. The very informative article Reclaim the kerb: The future of parking and kerbside management by the Centre for London, tells us, amongst other things, that 'A simple calculation taking into account the size of a standard parking space shows that parked vehicles take up well over 14 km2 (1,400 hectares) of space on our roads and streets'. Using this figure I have shown the area on a map of London in different ways, and these are shown below.
