In Chiang Mai near Chang Phueak Gate a sizeable paved area in front of a few mini-stores and a Ford dealership every day after 6 PM turns from parking space into busy street food market. Struck me as efficient use of space.
I think it's pretty common to use downtown parking lots for events on weekends. I know DC also has "rush hour lanes" -- parking spots that turn into a lane of traffic during rush hour.
It also doesn't help that Philadelphia's property taxes are based on decades-old property value assessments, and instead of reassessing buildings, they just jack up the property tax rate. If you build a new building today, you'll get murdered in taxes. That's assuming you don't get murdered on the union labor, or murdered by the unions if you try to avoid using union labor.
So in DC, there isn't as much residential property in the city proper. It's a lot of grandiose buildings meant more for showing off the might of the empire than for fitting in lots of people. Also, the housing tends to be newer, more vertically scaled, with their own parking garages. In Philadelphia, people hold rallies to block construction of parking garages.
Not sure what "city proper" means in this context, but something like 600,000 people live in the District, which is not a terribly large city. Very few of them live in grandiose buildings like you might see around the Mall. In fact, there are pretty strict height restrictions, which means there aren't any highrise apartments and vertical development is limited.
That's the point I was trying to make. The ratio between the available street space for parking and the people who need to park in the District is much higher than the in Philadelphia.
