A few weeks ago, over 250 commercial real estate pros gathered for the RealShare Atlanta conference. A couple of comments from two different panel speakers show that the real estate world sees big changes happening in Atlanta, with a movement away from car dependency in the city: “We have to solve the parking problem and get people onto mass transit.” “We believe in mass transit simply because we have to. Urban parking ratios will not go up. We are very focused in Atlanta. It’s important for us that our projects that a MARTA (transit) stop be within two blocks of walking distance.“ Read the full report hereIt’s encouraging to read this coming from RE pros. But the big question in my mind: will the banks get on board with this reduction in parking and a move toward transit? I know of several instances where intown developers wanted to build low (or no) parking for a project, but the lending banks demanded it, insisting that it would be a liability to build a place without lots of parking in Atlanta. Can low-parking, pro-transit development get funded in here? When will leaders speak up about it?Though I’m very excited about the plans for transit oriented developments at MARTA stations in general, I’m also concerned about the amount of parking that appears in the early renderings of proposals. Above is an image of what the Brookhaven MARTA station could look like. At the top of the picture, those dark grey blocks that are being cupped by white structures – those are all parking decks. If real estate pros know the need for increased transit use and decreased parking, why is MARTA proposing all this parking in projects at train stations? You can also see a large amount of parking in the rendering for the proposed King Memorial Station TOD. Why not embrace a more innovative type of development that builds a land-use plan in a forward-thinking way? These attached parking decks, if built, will be near impossible to convert to another use in the future. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity to build a better cities (I use the plural because the MARTA transit developments are in multiple metro cities) – and if it’s a bank loan that’s causing the drive for parking here, local political leaders need to step up and intervene as best they can and at least get this problem of funding good urbanism into the public conversation. In the piece I wrote for Architects Newspaper recently, I included a great quote from my colleague-in-urbanism, Matt Garbett “I think urbanists share a vision for the city, but I don’t think we’re effectively sharing that vision in a way that is shaping the city. We lack an advocate at the city-wide level who really has the people and the press’s attention, someone willing to speak about the bad and the real, sometimes difficult measures that need to be taken to improve.” Yes to that. The leadership of our local governments needs to step up and voice concern for building good TODs. Want to make affordable housing? Get parking lowered. The more parking that’s built into these developments, the more money they will cost the developers – and that cost gets passed on to the housing prices (dollar amount varies according to land costs and construction style, but generally it costs from $15,000 to $30,000 per space to build structured parking; if there’s one space built per apartment bedroom, that’s a significant increase in housing price). If you’re serious about affordable housing, you need to get serious about reducing parking for housing next to transit.