Leftover lots

Parking can be twenty to forty percent of a city centre. If cars no longer sit all day, that land could become shops or homes. That is the promise people make when they talk about cars with no driver.

It does not happen by itself. A garage with a low ceiling is still a garage. Ownership changes slowly. And if the cars cruise instead of parking, the miles go up and the land gift never arrives.

Millspan’s garage two blocks inland is half empty. The curb at Nia’s is full. That gap is the design hole this lesson is about: the space exists, and nothing sends the waiting cars to it.

Once you see the garage and the curb as one system, a rule for the curb and a use for the lot become the same invent.

The tempting mistake is to assume freed parking becomes housing on its own.

That is what lets you invent the street.