Editorial comment: An end to the parking space?

A new study suggests decreasing the number of parking spots new developments must provide in the hope of reducing car ownership citywide. That just won’t work in Riverdale.

Nearly a century ago, the creators of Fieldston proudly advertised their new development as “a suburb in the city.” Ever since, people who move to Riverdale have extolled its least urban qualities — its neighborliness, open space and slower pace — while rejoicing in its easy access to New York’s vaunted energy.

Now, however, in the mouths of some of the city’s most advanced planners, “suburban” has become a slur. In a study titled “Suburbanizing the city,” they call on City Hall “to substantially reduce the amount of off-street parking being planned and built in the five boroughs,” by easing or repealing the rules that require developers to provide parking when they build new apartment buildings.

Still reeling from the defeat of congestion pricing, they have launched a counterattack in the hope of reducing car ownership.

Their argument is as insular as Manhattan itself. It fails to recognize or respect the millions of New Yorkers who have chosen to live more quietly than Manhattanites in communities far less dense. It imagines that everyone lives as Manhattan residents live — no more than a block or two (or at most three) from the nearest food market, dry cleaner, restaurant, pharmacy and bank.

Imagine getting your shopping home from Riverdale Avenue to Palisade Avenue; from Johnson Avenue to Waldo Avenue; or from Skyview to Huxley Avenue.

Part of the price we pay for living a less-crowded life in places that value open space and human scale is the need for a car.

“Suburbanizing the city” betrays its Manhattan-centered view of life in New York when it argues that “there is a good rationale to restrict parking in many neighborhoods — particularly close to subway stations,” as though the only reason a resident would need transportation is to get to the subway’s destination — Manhattan.

Riverdalians know better. Sometimes we buy our clothing and furniture and books in Westchester. In addition to shopping, we ferry our kids to and from school, to after-school programs and to Little League and soccer games. All very suburban, it’s true, but we like it that way.

The study’s assertion that eliminating off-street parking will cut down on the build-up of carbon emissions was clearly written by someone who has never spent half an hour circling the block hoping for a space to open up.

Illogically, “Suburbanizing the city” argues that zoning regulations shouldn’t require off-street parking because the Department of City Planning doesn’t know how much is needed. Riverdalians have learned from painful experience that just because the city is ignorant of their neighborhood’s needs, it does not follow that their neighborhood has none.

The building boom here has caused a parking space crunch. In approving the new buildings thrusting their way into the landscape, the planning bureaucracy’s ignorance has led it to require too few off-street parking spaces, not too many.

In Manhattan, as many households may live in a single high-rise as live in all of Fieldston. Manhattanites find the proximity to theater and museums and shops stimulating and the constant bustle exciting. That’s fine, but it’s not the only way to live, and, indeed, part of New York City’s vitality derives from the diversity of its citizens’ modes of life.

If the rules that require developers to provide parking were discarded, residential neighborhoods would become more densely built, more crowded, more like Manhattan.

If the residents of the Riverdale-Kingsbridge area don’t want their community to suffer that fate, we have the opportunity to demand more sensible rules — rules that recognize that one parking space per apartment may not be enough in an era when both spouses work and children often attend different schools and engage in different after-school activities.

With the credit crunch putting an end for the time being to the land rush that has engulfed so much of the city, now is the time to make common cause with communities elsewhere to preserve the option of living in a suburb in the city.

This is part of the October 2, 2008 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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