How Does Parking Inventory in Knoxville Compare?

A recent article, "Parking has Eaten American Cities," compares the amount of land consumed by automobile parking in five U.S. cities.

Intrigued by this work, the TPO wanted to know how Knoxville compares. Staff coordinated with the University of Tennessee Knoxville to start the project through an undergraduate GIS class. More than 142,000 parking spots were identified after reviewing less than half of off-street parking in the city!

To complete this project, TPO hired Brennan Wilson as an intern to continue counting parking spots and analyze the final data. Brennan graduated from UT Knoxville in May with a bachelor’s degree in geography. Working in the KGIS database, he is reviewing and counting parking areas and parking lots, developing methods to inventory on-street parking, and developing analyses such as parking per capita and parking per gross floor area on commercial parcels.

“I’m hopeful that my work can help make Knoxville a more environmentally conscious and efficient city while also exploring alternative travel methods,” Brennan said when asked about the project.

We’re looking forward to digging in to his findings once the project is complete. We expect that the results will help guide future planning efforts and could eventually change the landscape of our city.