An intrepid city employee created Philadelphia's first mapping tool for visualizing the layers of regulation and management that govern when, when, and how people park in Philadelphia.
Jon Geeting reports on the work of Lauren Ancona in creating Parkadelphia, which Geeting describes as "a powerful new tool for visualizing Philly’s accumulated parking rules."
"While not yet fully complete (locations of individual parking meters, loading zones, and other features are on the way) the application provides an easy one-stop shop for learning about the street parking regulations near you," adds Geeting.
Geeting performs an initial review of the tool, producing a few takeaways, such as
- "Permit parking districts cover most of the city, but permit parking blocks are mostly a greater Center City phenomenon."
- "Neighborhoods with the hottest parking politics mostly aren’t taking advantage of permit parking."
In addition to detailing these, and a couple additional, observations, Geeting calls for readers to add their own.
FULL STORY: New 'Parkadelphia' tool visualizes Philly parking rules

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Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research