Using inner-city land for car parking doesn’t add up in a housing crisis

In a country where the cost of land is so exorbitantly high and the supply of housing so scarce, how could so many surface car parks exist? wonders Timothy Welch on The Spinoff. In Auckland, arguably the most housing-constrained market in New Zealand, the still developing Wynyard Quarter on the downtown waterfront presents a clear case of car parking over potential housing. It would take almost three years for a single open-air parking space to earn back the cost of the land it sits on. It’s time to use a fraction of that space to house many people instead of a few machines.