A new tool from TransForm shows where parking is underutilized in the Bay Area, even finding wasted space in a city as notorious for parking difficulties as San Francisco.
Rachel Dovey shares the details of Oakland-based non-profit TransForm, which launched a new database last week to help show that "parking structures in Northern California’s urban core are actually underutilized..." Dovey describes how the tool works:
The tool, called the GreenTrip Parking Database, overlays multifamily housing data on Google Maps, focusing primarily on high-growth areas like the East and South Bay. With over 65 complexes shown, users can filter information into sub-categories (to find only buildings with a certain number of units, say, or only buildings located in a certain city). Each tailored search brings up a page with parking information: the number of spaces allotted per unit, the number of spaces actually being used and then, most significantly, the cost of that unused space.
The article also includes information on how TransForm created the database.
FULL STORY: New Tool Maps Bay Area’s Expensive, Unused Parking

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City of Mt Shasta
McKenna
Economic & Planning Systems, Inc.
Cohousing Association of the US
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Rail~Volution
Sun City Center Community Association, Inc
City of Mesa
Town of Gilbert, Arizona
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This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
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