Friends of the Earth Birmingham Action Briefing Aug-Sept 97

Car Park Campaign

National Friends of the Earth have launched a "Car Park Campaign" to look at whether under-used city centre car parks can be converted into housing. They have chosen Birmingham, Leeds, the London Borough of Islington and Manchester as the initial sites for this campaign. Birmingham Friends of the Earth have taken up the challenge and are investigating our local car parks. Eventually, this will lead to a report outlining the possibility of providing housing in urban areas rather than the countryside. We hope to demonstrate that we are too reliant on providing parking, when housing can be designed to minimise car use. Clearly, if people live in city centre car parks they will not need to use their cars to get to the city centre to work and play!

Did you know Birmingham city centre has 24 car parks (over half of which are multi-storey) within one square kilometre (half a square mile)? There is room for 8,378 (yes - that's eight thousand three hundred and seventy-eight!) vehicles in these car parks alone. Add the National Indoor Arena and private car parks for offices and the figure goes into the tens of thousands. Most of these spaces are used by commuters who drive into work, often alone, and leave their cars doing nothing all day except wasting valuable potential living space.

Watch this space (Ha ha! Ed.)

James Martin