Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

by Jeff Speck

Whenever I feel like complaining about our own Washington parking struggle, I remind myself of the story of DC USA. In the mid-2000s, construction began on what was to become the District’s largest retail complex, a $145 million, 500,000-square-foot colossus anchored by Target, Best Buy, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Because the development was located at a Metro stop in the heart of Columbia Heights, with thirty-six thousand residents within a ten-minute walk,19 the city generously modified its parking requirements. Rather than insisting on its obligatory four spaces per one thousand square feet—a truly suburban standard—the District allowed the number to be cut in half.20 Despite the designers’ predictions that this was still way too much parking, the project went ahead with a $40 million, taxpayer-funded underground garage holding one thousand cars. Fast-forward to 2008: DC USA has become a resounding success, having brought new life to a struggling neighborhood, thanks in part to its pedestrian-oriented design. Shops are doing even more business than expected. And the parking garage is empty—so empty that its managers routinely shut off one of its two levels completely,