Texas boasts greater bird diversity than almost any state, with more than six hundred species living in or passing through during spring and fall migrations. Jennifer L. Bristol’s Parking Lot Birding speaks to people who would love to observe a wide variety of birds in easy access locations that don’t require arduous hikes or a degree in ornithology. As she explains, “I have personally trudged down hundreds of miles of trails in Texas, loaded down with gear, searching for birds, only to return to the parking lot to find what I was looking for.” Drawing on her experience as a former park ranger and lifelong nature enthusiast, Bristol explores ninety birding locations that are open to the public and accessible regardless of ability or mobility. Divided by geography, with each of the nine sections centered on a large urban area or defined ecoregion, Parking Lot Birding: A Fun Guide to Discovering Birds in Texas will take readers to birds in locales from the busy heart of Dallas to the remote Muleshoe Wildlife Refuge in the plains north of Lubbock. Each birding stop includes the name and address of a specific birding location, number of species that have been recorded, and types of birding amenities offered. Locational accounts end with a “Feather Fact” that provides interesting and relevant details about selected birds in a particular region. You never know what you might see when on the beaten path, especially in a state as big and ecologically diverse as Texas. So grab your binoculars and let’s go birding!

Off-street parking requirements are devastating American cities. So says the author in this no-holds-barred treatise on the way parking should be. Free parking, the author argues, has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion, but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people, and why American motor vehicles now consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. But it doesn't have to be this way. The author proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking, namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking.

"Like Jakle and Sculle's earlier works on car culture, Lots of Parking will fascinate professional planners, landscape designers, geographers, environmental historians, and interested citizens alike."--BOOK JACKET.

If you own a car, use public transportation, go to work or school, use health care, shop or dine out, or are part of a metropolitan community, parking affects you, probably in more ways than you’ve thought about. Because parking has such a huge effect on what happens in cities and towns and how the greater transportation system functions, decision-makers are beginning to realize that it’s critical to employ parking expertise at the beginning of the planning process. Designing and implementing an effective, professionally managed parking strategy can mean the difference between frustrating and costly traffic congestion and efficient, time-saving traffic flow. A Guide to Parking provides information on the current state of parking, providing professionals and students with an overview on major areas of parking and the transportation and mobility industry, punctuated by brief program examples.

Donald Shoup brilliantly overcame the challenge of writing about parking without being boring in his iconoclastic 800-page book The High Cost of Free Parking. Easy to read and often entertaining, the book showed that city parking policies subsidize cars, encourage sprawl, degrade urban design, prohibit walkability, damage the economy, raise housing costs, and penalize people who cannot afford or choose not to own a car. Using careful analysis and creative thinking, Shoup recommended three parking reforms: (1) remove off-street parking requirements, (2) charge the right prices for on-street parking, and (3) spend the meter revenue to improve public services on the metered streets. Parking and the City reports on the progress that cities have made in adopting these three reforms. The successful outcomes provide convincing evidence that Shoup’s policy proposals are not theoretical and idealistic but instead are practical and realistic. The good news about our decades of bad planning for parking is that the damage we have done will be far cheaper to repair than to ignore. The 51 chapters by 46 authors in Parking and the City show how reforming our misguided and wrongheaded parking policies can do a world of good. Read more about parking benefit districts with a free download of Chapter 51 by copying the link below into your browser. https://www.routledge.com/posts/13972

Interested in learning about a business that many people love to hate? Then go on the life journey of a 40-year veteran of the parking business who shares the many highs and lows in this quirky profession that we all deal with everyday. Larry J. Cohen, CAPP will provide you with a parking primer, interlaced with crazy stories that will leave you wanting more. Cohen's been responsible for managing parking at universities, hospitals, and a municipality, including managing parking during the inauguration of Presidents Bush and Obama in Washington D.C.Catch a glimpse as he takes you behind the scenes of running a parking program, deals with the politics of parking, and answers such burning questions as "can you get out of paying a parking ticket?"

For much of the past century, we have viewed the issue of parking from the driver’s seat. It follows that key narratives about parking reaffirm the immediate needs of the driver. A consequence of this approach is a failure to understand the significant damage that parking causes to the destination. That damage is amplified by ‘cheap, easy’ parking at the expense of place and access outcomes. Viewing parking from an urban planning and design perspective highlights different issues and opportunities. Five perspectives are offered: Place – If we gave drivers all the parking they wanted, the destination would not be worth visiting. Politics – Parking is intensely territorial, emotional, and prone to populism, and this is a barrier to strategic and sustainable parking reform. Policy – Parking tends to be focused on the ‘me, here and now’ needs of the driver at the expense of bigger picture and longer term policy objectives. Price – Subsidized parking exists behind opaque pricing mechanisms. In contrast, a transparent accounting of costs is a vehicle for strategic parking reform. Professional practice – Parking is a significant land-use issue, located at the juncture of transport and urban planning and design. Improving urban parking outcomes requires an integrated and collaborative planning process. An alternative view of parking is timely as new technologies and economies fundamentally change everything we understand about parking. A potential paradigm shift is in the making. Rethinking Parking provides a pathway to a better parking/place balance and access to destinations worth visiting. It is valuable reading for students and professionals engaged in transport, planning, urban access, and design.

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