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

by Jeff Speck

Ocean Avenue is free of off-street parking because it is illegal. Instead of providing parking lots for their customers and employees, businesses pay in-lieu fees that help finance shared city parking spaces located a few blocks away. This strategy has helped to create a unique collection of midblock courtyards and walkways, as well as ensuring a maximum amount of sidewalk activity, since nobody arrives at their destination from the rear. Carmel is now one of dozens of American cities that handle downtown parking this way, including Orlando, Chapel Hill, and Lake Forest, Illinois. In-lieu fees in these cities typically range from about seven to ten thousand dollars per space not provided, which is roughly in line with the cost of building a space in an asphalt surface lot.