Civilization’s Eternal Quest for the Perfect Parking Spot

Think parking in Southern California is a nightmare?

Back in the 7th Century BC, Assyrian King Sennacherib decreed that any chariot owner who parked so as to block the royal road “should be put to death with his head impaled on a pole in front of his house.”

Some 2,700 years later, author Joel Garreau points out, “the pivot of urbanity and civilization at the approach of the 21st Century is still, as it turns out, parking.”

Anyone who has ever gone shopping at the mall knows the truth of that statement. An otherwise delightful journey of consumption can be spoiled by not being able to find a parking space within sight of the front door. At times like these, Sennacherib’s policy seems not only practical, but just.

No wonder, then, that parking lots, at times even more so than roads, can dominate our driving experiences.

Pearl-bedecked society matrons once threw punches over a spot in the cramped lot of a gourmet food store in South Pasadena, forcing the market to adopt valet parking. And neighborhoods abutting some of the region’s hipper environs jealously guard their streets with permit parking districts.

Developers understand the primal nature of parking better than anyone.

That’s why most modern buildings--particularly shopping centers and grocery stores--are akin to islands surrounded by oceans of asphalt. When it comes to parking, more is better.

In Garreau’s book, “Edge City: Life on the New Frontier,” he explains the cardinal rule of such development: An American will not walk more than 600 feet--less than the length of two football fields--before getting into a car.

Hence, more land is gobbled up by parking lots than by parks in Los Angeles, according to planning officials.

Like them or not, these oil-stained prairies shape the way we move through the urban landscape, and even how we think about a city. In his comedic novel “I’ll Take It,” Paul Rudnick comments on the universal epiphany of finding the perfect spot, though the scene here is the East Coast.

“Locating an available parking space on the street was the equivalent of a miracle healing; a convenient, inexpensive parking garage was the next best thing,” he writes.

“When Joe was little, he had assumed that finding a parking space was the sole reason his family visited Manhattan; his parents had taken such scientific joy in the hunt. After seeing a hit Broadway play or musical, his parents would first discuss the quality of their parking experience, with an enthusiasm often lacking in their treatment of the theatrical event.”

But the cost of all this parking--in money, in space and in environmental damage--is frightening.

Because the lots are generally impervious to weather, all the chemicals that drip from the underbellies of cars generally cascade into the storm drains and out to sea during heavy rains.

On average, a car needs 400 square feet--about the size of a small studio apartment--to park, including room to back up and move around. In Los Angeles County, the standard dimensions for a space are 8 by 18. Compact spaces are 7 1/2 by 15.

In “Edge City,” Garreau describes the three basic ways to house a car, each more attractive--and consequently more expensive--than the next.

The first and most common is surface parking, the ubiquitous black lots that line most major boulevards. The cost to the developer, excluding the price of the land, is about $2,000 per space.

Then there is multilevel or garaged parking, which costs about $5,000 per space to build. Finally, there are underground garages, which run up to $20,000 per space.

So if it costs so much, why bother?

Because drivers--and often banks and city planners--demand them. On average, local laws require four spaces for every 1,000 square feet of office space. Sometimes more, but rarely less. Many projects have more space for cars than for people.

Proposals that don’t have enough parking will have a tough time getting funded by a bank. And local planning officials will almost never relax a parking requirement.

“Developers are always looking for ways to eliminate parking,” said John Schwarze, head of current planning for the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning. “We tell them, ‘Don’t even bother.’ ”

Indeed, the connection between buildings and parking is so strong that every conceivable type of land use has a corresponding parking requirement. UCLA urban planning professor Donald Shoup compiled a list of activities and the number of spaces each typically requires nationwide.

Golf courses require 10 spaces per hole, swimming pools a space for every 2,500 gallons of water, mausoleums 10 spaces per maximum interments per hour. Rectories demand three spaces for every four clergymen; nunneries one space for every 10 nuns.

Shoup and others argue that life could be better without so much parking. He figures that if drivers were forced to pay for all the free parking they now take for granted, the demand for spaces would drop.

It’s not staking the heads of malefactors on poles, but King Sennacherib might approve anyway.