The greatest threat to the future of Downtown Los Angeles isn’t crime or drugs or politics run amok.

It’s parking podiums.

That’s the premise behind a recent Los Angeles Times editorial by Steven Sharp, who also happens to be the cofounder and editor of Urbaniza LA, a site that very closely covers the building and construction boom remaking DTLA.

Sharp has been following many large-scale projects as they move from proposal to development and he’s noticed that most, if not all of them, come with a “disjointed” or “ugly” parking podium that juts out, blocks views, and otherwise takes up space that could be used much more effectively.

The need for podiums stemmed from minimum parking requirements that make a lot of sense for small apartment complexes but get a bit out of control when applied to towers with 500-600 market-rate units. Couple that with the fact that underground lots can be cost-prohibitive and surface parking is prohibited in DTLA and you get monolithic podiums. 

Sharp calls attention to the 30-story Watermarke, an aqua-colored glass tower whose view gets cut off by an unsightly concrete parking garage. There’s also the 37-story condo tower at 1100 Wilshire Blvd. that includes a 15-level parking podium that makes up almost half the building’s mass.

Aesthetics aside, Sharp notes that the rise on parking podiums contradicts the city’s Vision Zero plan to eliminate pedestrian death by creating so many dangerous vehicle access points across sidewalks and into busy streets.

The solution? Sharp notes some potential fixes as mandatory underground parking, a requirement to wrap above-ground parking into residential spaces, and robotic parking garages that use 50 percent less space than traditional ones. There’s also the possibility the city could designate centralized sites as parking garages for multiple buildings, but that assumes a developer hasn’t already snatched that lot up for more money.