Allow Space for Everyone

Regarding ‘This Spot Reserved’ by Gale Holland (Dec. 9): European, namely German, cities such as Munich, Cologne, Dusseldorf and Frankfurt implemented preferential parking districts because the centers of those cities are uniformly multi-tenant, multi-use dwellings-very narrow streets with a density rivaling New York, but without modern city subway and taxi coverage.

Parking in those areas is so bad that people park on sidewalks, street corners and median strips between sidewalks and set-back buildings, mostly with the quiet acquiescence of local law enforcement.

However, even those municipalities and others such as Hamburg and Berlin (both larger cities with decent subways) are considering or actively trimming their existing residential preferred parking districts because they are realizing that those districts are a lousy idea, de-urbanizing once vital neighborhoods and turning them into pacified bed-burghs.

In Los Angeles, a city often bemoaned as not very urban and centered to begin with, this would be disastrous, creating walled communities by way of parking permit.

Another drawback is the underhand trade in permits. In my native Hamburg, people would rent their visitor passes to restaurant owners, bringing the parking problem back, but ripping off people. I hear the same is quite common in the West Hollywood and Hollywood communities. For the sake of urbanity of our wonderful, but sometimes strange, city let’s all come out against residential parking ghettos.

JAN DREIER

Venice