AU- ADAPTIVE RE-USE/PARKING LA

The city of Los Angeles is an automobile-oriented low-density metropolis with a total population of 3,849,378 and a total number of 2,499,764 registered automobiles.  Supporting this immense quantity of automobiles, an endless network of freeways are Los Angeles’ distinctive urban landscape, and more than 5,400 parking structures, in the city of Los Angeles only, are connected by this vast mobile network. The parking structure is one of the most predominant typologies in Los Angeles urbanism, but it is also one of the least welcomed and least appreciated urban places. However, many parking structures have an underlying strong geographic real estate value of proximity to popular destinations. Supporting massive migration of people to these destinations, parking structure naturally becomes a venue of a large gathering of people and automobiles.  Such popular locations tend to raise a land value, and parking, which is usually taking more than 50% of mix-use development in a low-density urban area, can be reconsidered for its opportunity cost of the land that might otherwise be used to generate revenue.

This project is seeking to augment the role of parking typology as a new urban gathering place by maximizing Los Angeles auto-based temporal programs. LA has been a place for distinctive auto-based programs from drive-in café to the flee market to drive-in churches. Reinforced by contemporary ubiquitous technologies, adding these temporal programs on a top level of the parking structure is a sustainable urban infill development, where diverse community-oriented programs occupy parking structures and revitalized as temporal urban centers.  It will reduce vehicle miles traveled, while maximizes the efficient use of existing parking structures, which has different peak demands between weekdays and weekends and during business hours and off-business hours. The augmented parking structures are connected as a new urban network of exchanging temporal programs by each program move one parking structure to the other parking structure like Smart Growth parking structures which are the Department of Transportation of the city of Los Angeles’ study for researching a sustainable way of mix-use developments around the parking structure.

The Department of Transportation of the city of Los Angeles is conducting surveys and researching a sustainable way of urban development based on the parking structures, called “Smart Growth”.  It is identifying and proposing sustainable mix-use developments near existing parking structures with strong values of their size, proximity to transit, market and economic conditions in the immediate transit-oriented (TOD) area, and other considerations. They also may exhibit strong geographic locations with regard to regional patterns of public capital investment, ethnic diversity, jobs/housing balance, and socioeconomic equity.

Re-typologyzing parking is based on and utilizing given values of the parking structure and adding temporal programs into the parking structure. It is a new urban acupuncture where value-abandoned place becomes revitalized as a new urban point of the temporal program.  Its sustainability lies on two factors; first, it is a densification rather than sprawling which will possible reduce vehicle miles traveled from parking to another parking’s; second, it maximizes the efficient use of existing parking structure, which has different peak parking demands between weekdays and weekends and during business hours and off-business hours.