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<br /> SA <br /> Page 23 <br />In addition to potentially discouraging development and degrading its attractive, compact nature, <br />excessive minimum parking requirements for Downtown Redwood City may conflict with <br />several local goals, such as: <br />1. The policy for the creation of nice places. <br />2. The need to increase the housing supply, especially affordable housing. <br />3. The desire to stimulate new Downtown construction. <br />How Did This Happen? <br />This is nothing for Redwood City to be ashamed of. Most downtown parking requirements in <br />most zoning ordinances around the country are antiquated and based on weak studies or no <br />studies at all. Most are suburban in nature and are not conducive to good downtown-style urban <br />development. Most have far too many land use categories. This is due to a failure of the planning <br />and engineering professions to study and examine the workings and needs of downtowns as they <br />relate to parking. This is because the Parking Generation manual used to create most parking <br />requirements has the following problems: <br />1. The number of studies used to calculate the parking generation rates are too <br /> small to be statistically signiflc:'ant. <br />2. The studies are based on low density, single-use, transit-less, auto-oriented land <br /> uses. <br />These problems have only began to surface in recent years. Professor Donald Shoup of UCLA, <br />considered by many to be the leading parking expert in the country, has written extensively on <br />the subject. An excerpt from his paper The Trouble With Minimum Parking Requirements that <br />explains how the current situation came to be is included in Appendix 3. <br /> ~t;l~e 16 <br /> '_'_~."___'n . ...~_.-..... - .--.... ~,_._-.. _'" ,,0____ _~.___.._ --_._....,,,,....~ <br /> ,,-,,-., <br />