Parking issues are destroying our beautiful developments
Pakistan is one of the fastest developing nations of the world. Urban areas are packed with people and usage of vehicles in increasing day by day in Pakistan. Majority of commercial and residential developments in Pakistan are old and cannot accommodate the increasing number of vehicles. Parking is the major issue in Pakistan.
Old commercial & Residential developments
Parking problem has reached an alarming stage in Pakistan. Major cities like Karachi and Lahore have severe parking issues. Old developments in Pakistan are unable to cope with the technological changes. Old housing societies are losing value as being not suitable for the modern living. Old commercial areas are losing businesses just because of the parking issues.
New commercial & residential developments
Due to high demand for commercial and residential units, we can see many under construction projects in Pakistan’s major cities. These new residential and commercial developments in urban areas of Pakistan are providing huge parking facilities. Our new commercial developments have parking space for thousands of vehicles. Same is the case with new housing projects. But still developers in Pakistan are not following the world standards. The other problem is that new developments have no expansion plans for future. Million dollar question is can new developments accommodate rising parking demands of future? UK has 600 cars per 1000 people but in Pakistan we have just 25 cars per 1000 people. What will happen when nearly everyone will have car in Pakistan like USA?
Solutions
In Pakistan we can solve all parking issues by adopting the international standards and also by keeping in view the future demands. For residential areas, parking depends on the number of bedrooms. For 1-2 bedroom units we need 1 parking space. For 3-4 bedroom units we need 2 parking spaces and for 5-6 bedroom units we need 3 parking spaces. For commercial developments we should provide 2-6 parking spaces per 1000 sq. ft., depending on the requirements.