Housing
Is Boston Ready for an Apartment Building That Bars Cars?
A proposed development in the city underscores the tradeoffs and design challenges of building cities around the car.
The architect Sebastian Mariscal begins his plans for any future project with the same question, one that has little to do with the aesthetics of a building or the experience of the people who will one day use it. "When I design a building,” he says, "the first thing I have to resolve is my parking." He means, by this, that he must weigh requirements in most city codes mandating a specific ratio of off-street parking spaces for each new unit of housing or office space.
"Every developer and every architect starts the process like that,” Mariscal laments. "'If I can put in 40 cars, then I can do 40 units.'"