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<br /> 8A <br /> Page 15 <br />It is very clear that the parking challenge before us is significant: keep Downtown adequately <br />parked as it grows without stifling growth or harming the qualities that make Downtown a great <br />place. However, downtowns, by their very nature, possess certain parking advantages. <br />Identifying and taking advantage of these assets is one of the keys to our parking destiny. <br />Downtown: A Park Once Environment <br />Assume that you have the afternoon off, and you are going to take care of some errands. First, <br />you might stop by the post office to send a package to someone. Next, let's say that you drop a <br />watch off to get repaired. You then meet a friend for some conversation over coffee, and lastly <br />you pick up a book that you've been meaning to read before you finally head home. <br />In a non-downtown setting you would probably need a parking space at each one of these <br />destinations. That would mean, for this example, that you would need four parking spaces for <br />your hypothetical afternoon off. <br />However, in a good downtown, your afternoon would be different. You would only need one <br />parking space for the afternoon. You could easily walk from the post office to the watch repair <br />shop to the coffee shop to the bookstore artd back to your car again. Why is this? There are three <br />main characteristics of a good downtown that make it possible. <br />1. Compactness <br />2. Mixed-use <br />3. Walkability <br />First, downtowns are compact. This means that a given number of activities take up less space <br />since buildings are a little taller and cover more of their site. By bringing everything closer <br />together, the need to drive from one place to another is reduced. <br />Second, downtowns are mixed-use in nature. This means that offices, shops, restaurants, <br />services, and homes can all be found very close together, sometimes in the same building. Non- <br />downtown areas typically segregate these functions from each other, which causes them to be <br />further from each other than they are in a downtown. This distance is usually beyond a <br />comfortable walk, which most people consider to be Y-J of a mile or less. <br /> 1>f)~~ g <br /> ~... . - ..... ~ . - -_._.~. ..,..~_.._.. _..~.._----..__...~. ....--.,...---- -~ ..--___. -._____._.__...___.. '.u._ <br />