parking, green infrastructure, urban renewal, parking

1. Greening the Concrete Jungle
Developed and Presented by:
Greg Schundler and Graywolf Nattinger
Houston, Modern Day
Rotterdam, World War II

2. Hartford, CT: An Example of Parking and Urban Decay
• Parking is the single largest land use in American cities (30-40% of total land cover)
• Unused and excess impervious asphalt surfaces are ecological liabilities and urban
revitalization opportunity costs

3. Goals
1) Identify parking areas that are underutilized, redundant, near
ecologically sensitive areas and/or near public transit routes.
2) Consolidate lots by creating or encouraging use of parking
garages in high use areas
3) Develop green parking infrastructure where feasible
4) Convert pavement into park expansion, new parks, open
space, and biodiversity corridors.

4. Source Data
• WA State Landuse: Washington Dept. of Ecology,
http://www.ecy.wa.gov/services/gis/data/data.htm
• Pierce County Hydrology: Pierce County GIS Data
https://wagda.lib.washington.edu/data/geography/wa_counti
es/pierce/index.html
• King County Hydrology: King County GIS Data Portal
http://www5.kingcounty.gov/gisdataportal/Default.aspx
• WRIA10 outline: ROSS project dataset from gisws.sde
database.
• Biodiversity Corridors: ROSS project dataset from gisws.sde
database.
“Ecosystem” feature dataset.
• Express Transit routes and Light Rail platforms: Sound
Transit - GIS Data
https://wagda.lib.washington.edu/data/geography/wa_counti
es/SoundTransit/index.html
• Parking Occupancy table: Puget Sound Regional Council
• Brownfields Addresses: Dept. of Ecology Cleanup Site Search
https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/gsp/SiteSearchPage.aspx

5. Parking in Tacoma Data Statistics
• Data for parking lots from off-street parking
inventory of Central Business District (CBD)
• Mean Average Occupancy = 50.4%
• 169 areas representing 359 lots and 20,494
stalls
• Only 9% of lots have optimal Average
Occupancy or above (>85%)
• Total LandUse Parking Area = 1,062,804 sq ft
• Total LandUse “Green Space” = 3,514,930 sq ft

6. A Geospatial Problem
Scatter Plot of Parkings Lots by Stall Number and Average Occupancy
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
-
500
1,000
Stall Numbers
1,500
2,000

7. Work Flow Diagram

8. Geodatabase
Schema

9. Compiling and Sharing Data
• SDE: We used our original SDE
datasets to collect shapefiles from
the gisws.sde geodatabase that we
thought may be relevant to our
project. We used it as an idea
sharing platform (read only).
• Our operational platform was a file
geodatabase stored in Dropbox.
• Most processes and experimentation
performed in file geodatabases
saved to our personal workstations.

10. Challenges
• Image sharing
• Data manipulation updates (lacking full SDE capabilities)
• Comparing spatial data of objects within a single feature class
• Difficulty organizing topologies and networks
• Inconsistent/incongruent data:
1) Census blocks were larger than landuse parking lots
2) Many census blocks with parking data did not have Landuse “Parking Lots” designation and vice versa
3) Some Parking Lots had different land use designations (e.g. Tacoma Dome Parking Lot)

11. Tutorial-Joining Census Block Data to ArcMap
• OBJECTID: combination of several columns (use Excel Formula:
=A1&B1&C1)
• ArcMap is fussy with what data it will read from Excel: Excel will store
many digit numbers as Scientific Notation, which does not carry over
to ArcMap; change format to “General”

12. Decision
Model
“YES”
“NO”

13. Map 1
• Open Stalls is product of “occupancy” x
“number of stalls”
• Priority Criteria for adjacency:
•
•
•
•
•
green space
biodiversity corridors
public transit
streams
fish bearing streams

14. Map 2

15. Map 3
Map 4

16. Consolidation Opportunities/Parking Garage
• 13 is Parking
Garage (lower
right)
• Many
underutilized
parking lots and
lack of Green
Spaces
• Points of
Interest: Rialto
Theatre (7),
Pantages Theatre
(6), Frost Park,
Tacoma
Municipal
Building (26),
Pierce County
Building (20)

17. Consolidation Opportunities/Parking Garage
• 14 is Parking
Garage (upper
right)
• Many
underutilized
parking lots and
lack of Green
Spaces
• Transit Stops,
Condominums
(7), Bates
Technical College
(1), YMCA (11)

18. Green Space Augmentation
• Large Green
Space
• Connectivity
Opportunities
• Points of
Interest:
Churches,
Thriftway,
Stadium

19. New Green Space/Remove Pavement
• Parking Garage
(lower left)
• Public Transit stops
• Development
Opportunity
advertise by city (11)
• Lack of Green Space

20. Green Space Augmentation/New Park
• Undeveloped
lots with soil
coverage present
potentially
cheaper
opportunity
• Crane signifies
development
• Residential
areas( lower left)

21. Change Model/Improvement Programming

22. Change Model/Improvement Programming

23. Project Implementation

24. Project Implementation

25. Impact Model

26. Conclusions
Data of municipal storm water drainage systems
would be helpful for determining placement of
rain-gardens.
Detailed analysis of “WA land_use” would provide
a more comprehensive plan meeting our project
objectives, based on our criteria.
Explore Political/Economic Landscape
Funding Mechanisms:
• “Adopt a Park” allow businesses, churches, and
organizations to contribute toward urban
revitalization
• Brownfields Integrated Planning Grants