By Tim Redmond
So the developers and some businesses want to build more parking in San Francisco. We’ve seen this game before; in the past, the supervisors have been able to shoot it down, but now it may go before the voters. Here’s the part of the argument that infuriates me:
Supporters claim the initiative, sponsored by the San Francisco Council of District Merchants Associations, prepares The City for an expected influx of vehicles during the next five years.
Why is there an “expected influx of vehicles?”
Why is the city constantly looking for ways to plan for more cars?
Why isn’t it official city planning policy that the number of cars in San Francisco will decrease over the next five years?
This is the great lie of urban planning (as practiced by developers and their advocates): First you “project” more cars (or more jobs, or more population or whatever). Then you automatically have a case to build — more garages, more parking lots, more condos, more highrise office towers — for your “projected” demand. And, of course, once you bild million-dollar condos, they fill up (perhaps with globe-trotting wealthy people looking for pieds-a-terre, but whatever), thus fulfilling the “projections,” and once you make room for more cars, you’ll get more cars in a city that already has too many.
These “projections” are a bogus, self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s project a city we really want, and plan for that one.