Parking Lot Standards 2.0 – An Open Letter from the Urban League
Long Range Planning & Research
Planning & Development
City of London
300 Dufferin Ave
London, ON
July 7th 2022
Dear Planning & Development Staff and City Council,
Members of the Board of the League have been following the discussion regarding the updates to the Parking Standards with great interest. Members have emailed with staff, invited ULL members to stakeholder sessions, attended an external stakeholder meeting (Parking Standards Review Group-discussion) and submitted an open letter in March 2022 to share the Board’s thoughts on Parking Minimums.
We want to reiterate - we are supportive of removing Parking Minimums city-wide, and urge staff and Council to reconsider the current proposal to only remove parking minimums in the Downtown, Transit Village, Rapid Transit Corridor, and Main Street Place Types (and instead apply the removal city-wide). We understand some concern from Council regarding the potential congestion of parking in residential areas but believe that it can be resolved at the site plan level between developers and staff.
Cities around North America are realizing it is time to act on revitalizing their urban planning decisions, while people are changing their relationships with their ideas of work, home and community. For example, the City of Kingston, ON, recently removed parking minimums, imposed parking maximums and offered a “cash-in-lieu” option for developers to pay into a municipal carshare program rather than build unnecessary parking spaces. By rethinking the prevalence of car spaces over community spaces, we can better promote our core and surrounding neighbourhoods as a place to gather and grow as a thriving big city.
We support no parking minimums across the city, not just in the Downtown Transit Village, Rapid Transit Corridor, and Main Street Place Types, for the same reasons stated in our original letter.
We encourage Council to let developers and city staff determine an appropriate number of general parking spaces at the site plan level, depending on the building type and use.
That being said, we noticed the bike parking and accessible parking spaces are tied in a formula to the number of parking spaces, and therefore if there are little to no parking spaces, there are little to no bike or accessible parking spaces as well. We’d encourage staff to decouple the tethering of the calculation formula of bike parking and accessible parking to regular parking spaces.
In both the bike parking and accessible parking situations, we believe a minimum of each type should apply across the city.
We encourage a greater minimum parking space for accessible parking spaces, given our aging population.
We also encourage a greater minimum of bike parking spaces, given the shifting modes of transportation.
The League is also eager to provide input on the Parking Lot Urban Design Standards, which we understand will happen in the fall through the ReThink Zoning process. It is paramount that we create spaces that give a greater sense of safety, and security and, more importantly, add much-needed green space to the core. As Jane Jacobs has stated, “parking lots are inactive spaces that deaden everything around them.”
All parking areas (both current and future) should be required to dedicate space to become part of the green corridor that links larger green spaces and the river. These spaces should include native plants only, which require less watering and maintenance and promote and aid pollinators. These stepping stone areas can also assist in various areas of the Climate Emergency Action Plan in lowering urban heat, improving water retention on land, reducing pollutants entering waterways, providing insect habitat and creating a better aesthetic and vibrancy for the downtown overall.
Sincerely,
Morena Hernandez
Board President
Urban League of London
Representing the views of the Board of Directors