By day, Rob Linn is a mild-mannered urban planner and analyst with Data Driven Detroit.
But he has another life. He is an expert on downtown parking. He has counted the lots and garages and spaces, and downtown parking is in the news because a Canadian, of all people, who owns the Penobscot Building and the historic Detroit State Savings Bank has floated the idea of tearing down the bank and erecting a parking structure for the Penobscot.
Ashley Woods of Huffpost Detroit interviewed Linn about parking spaces. Here is an excerpt.
HD: Is Detroit's parking crunch any different from that of other major downtown business districts, in your opinion? Or is limited parking simply a cost of doing business in a big city?
RL: Detroit's downtown has far more parking per worker than nearly every major downtown in the country, from San Francisco to Atlanta, New York to San Diego. Indeed, I think limited parking is simply a cost of doing business in a major city. I don't have any data to prove this, but I've often suspected that our parking culture stems from the fact that the city is such a relatively small portion of the region's population. Because such a comparatively high percentage of downtown workers come from areas with ample parking, a parking-expectant culture pervades downtown.
