No parking?

“Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.”
—E.B. White

“I always loved cars. I don't know why, I can't explain it to you. It has always been with me.”
—Carlos Ghosn

When people buy a condo, you expect that a kitchen, bathroom and a parking spot are included. Well the kitchen and bathroom are still standard but if you are planning to live downtown in a new condo, you may have to kiss the parking spot good-bye.

At the RCMI condo high rise complex on University Avenue, there is no parking spots available at all. Instead the condo offers bicycle parking.



If you look at the large overhead view of the site, you will see that there is not enough land to offer much parking, even if they went down six stories below grade, so why not play the "green" card and offer none.



In the Yorkville area, Camrost Felcorp is building a complex consisting of 883 condos plus retail stores and only 278 parking spots. The parking spots cost an extra $73,000.

The theory
Underground parking spots cost about $35,000 to $40,000 to build so if the developer can build condos with limited parking, the apartments will be cheaper so more people can afford them. Also, the developer can stuff far more units into smaller pieces of land if they do not need to provide parking.

City planners hate cars and believe that if a city has more density, it can afford to build better public transit and the city becomes a cleaner and healthier place to live. So instead of requiring one parking spot per unit, Toronto now requires only 0.6 or 0.7 parking spots per unit and that figure is likely to go down.

This theory doesn't hold up
“I'd rather cry in a BMW car than laugh on the backseat of a bicycle.”
—Ma Nuo

I am certain that a happy car-less middle-class living in upscale condos is a marketing and socialist dream that will not stand the test of time.



Ma Nuo, a female contestant on a national Chinese TV dating show told a male contestant, that a man without a luxury car is not worth dating. She became famous for saying what most young women believe.

The Chinese discarded Mao's strict austerity decades ago and they are replacing their bicycles with luxury cars as fast as they can. Who in their right mind thinks Canadians are rushing in the opposite direction?

As soon as people start living in these car-less condos and see what a pain car-sharing, streetcars and city buses are and how expensive taxis are, they too may start crying while pedaling their bicycles.

top  contents   chapter   previous   next