The midtown Atlanta example is all wrong. Yes, there are a lot of cars in Atlanta. Yes, there are a lot of parking lots in Atlanta. Are these parking lots required to sustain these cars? Not at all. The rates for parking vary wildly, because people only want to park near where they are going.
Those parking lots are not for cars, they are for flipping real estate.
Real estate in midtown has been booming for a little over a decade as small run down buildings are demolished and 10 ~ 40 story skyscrapers are built. That means huge increases in land value, which attracts speculation. When a lot with a small building is purchased, what happens next? If the building stays, it will have to be serviceable, and a tenant found, which will lock the property up until the tenant leaves. So the building has to go, and the property might need to be re-zoned from single family residential.
If you pave over that lot, not only do you remove unwanted structures and get the opportunity to re-zone, there will be some low-maintenance passive income generated from people using the property to park their car.
So ultimately, those parking lots are good for the city in the long run. They're useless eyesores right now, but are more easily converted into high density buildings, as they have been doing for the last decade. In fact the real problem with midtown is that there has been too much high density construction too quickly, and not enough people have moved in yet.
So as much as I love a naval gazing rant, reality is a little more subtle, and a lot more complicated.
I live in and own real estate in a building that is pictured on that map. Some notes:
1) Not every red box is accurate. For example, one of them contains a bank as well as a parking structure, yet the bank was circled as well.
2) Not everything is counted evenly. Some condo and office buildings' parking structures are circled, and some aren't. Almost all of the condo buildings have their own interior parking, most of which is not circled. Hell, mine has an exterior blacktop parking lot and its not even circled.
3) The majority of those lots circled are not for flipping real estate. The ones circled are mostly commuter lots and business lots that are often mostly empty.
The majority of those lots circled are not for flipping real estate. The ones circled are mostly commuter lots and business lots that are often mostly empty.
It might be a matter of perspective, but a mostly empty parking lot is not in the business of being a parking lot. Flipping commercial real estate can take decades, the point is that the lot is not required and will likely help the area become more city-like.
I'd hesitate to call that "flipping", then. Flipping real estate is usually meant to be a short term process to extract quick profit, not a decades long wait. That would be "investing".
To me, investing is putting it to good use. Buying it cheap, paving it, and waiting to sell high is not "investing". Again, that could just be perspective.
It's been proposed that municipalities that want to increase density in a particular district convert their property taxes to land taxes in a revenue-neutral way.
That makes it much more painful to leave real-estate in a less-than-maximally-productive state.
Those parking lots are not for cars, they are for flipping real estate.
Real estate in midtown has been booming for a little over a decade as small run down buildings are demolished and 10 ~ 40 story skyscrapers are built. That means huge increases in land value, which attracts speculation. When a lot with a small building is purchased, what happens next? If the building stays, it will have to be serviceable, and a tenant found, which will lock the property up until the tenant leaves. So the building has to go, and the property might need to be re-zoned from single family residential.
If you pave over that lot, not only do you remove unwanted structures and get the opportunity to re-zone, there will be some low-maintenance passive income generated from people using the property to park their car.
So ultimately, those parking lots are good for the city in the long run. They're useless eyesores right now, but are more easily converted into high density buildings, as they have been doing for the last decade. In fact the real problem with midtown is that there has been too much high density construction too quickly, and not enough people have moved in yet.
So as much as I love a naval gazing rant, reality is a little more subtle, and a lot more complicated.