A full day workshop which uses gamification techniques to deliver a robust and detailed training session on how to create a future-proof town parking strategy.

Aims and objectives

There are significant structural changes afoot in our urban centres. Aviva Investors, with £20 billion worth of property under management in the UK is making strategic changes as it believes store-based retail is set to “decline significantly”. The successful High Street is emerging as a destination for social and leisure activities. The demand for affordable housing within the town centre continues, not only from the young but also an ageing population seeking access to the services and entertainment offered by an urban centre. With trends to own cars diminishing new opportunities and changes are arising from autonomous vehicles and mobility as a service that will impact not only as to how people travel but what infrastructure is required. Modern day concerns include air quality and a greater appreciation of the need to respond to urban life by designing cities for people. These factors are presenting a new context for the decisions facing urban planners and the parking strategies that support those decisions.

Learning outcomes

This one day course will provide delegates with a framework to determine their own parking strategy for the forthcoming decade.

Delegates will be able to:

• Appreciate what their parking strategy needs to do to support successful delivery of the wider objectives of their jurisdiction
• Draw on a toolkit of examples of different strategies that are being deployed
• Understand different strategies adopted from the UK and worldwide. Awareness of the rationale for the strategy, its expected outcomes, the challenges, risks, costs and unintended consequences associated with each.
• Refer to a range of example policies and alternative ideas related to the delivery of parking. How much should be provided, how provision is funded and who provides it, policies on pricing users, attitudes to pricing and approaches to controlling how the parking resource is allocated amongst users. Approaches that have been used to make new policies acceptable. 
• Apply thinking to how their jurisdiction makes provision for Coaches, Goods Vehicles, Electric Vehicles and Car Clubs as well as consideration of the importance of parking standards in shaping the urban form and use over the next decade.
• Set out what they need a parking strategy to do for their area either for delivery themselves or for delivery by a third party.

• ​Parking as an enabler - Why Parking is important and its role in supporting economic efficiency and retail reach.
• What are the Objectives?  - Major Urban Trends - The role & significance of a Parking Strategy to support wider objectives.
• Task Manager – Interactive Game  - Interactive game to explore why people choose destinations, how they travel, how long they stay and the influence that parking has in those choices.
• Reviewing the lessons learnt from Task Manager
• The right price for parking - Setting a tariff and the rationale behind the prices charged. Ten different models for setting parking charges from UK and overseas.
• Future trends - Strategies for AVs, MaaS, EVs and an ageing population. Social changes. Health & Security. Will today’s positive policy be tomorrow’s constraint? Do we need to plan to repurpose our parking structures? Thoughts and examples from overseas.
• Other users  - Coach, Lorry, Motorcycle Parking, Blue Badge, Cycles.
• Parking standards - Why parking standards matter. Strategies for creating the right urban setting, ensuring viable development and managing unwanted parking. Residential Parking Issues.
• Technology to enable change - Politicians and stakeholder concerns. Why is it so difficult? How technology may help break policy moulds
• City Manager Computer Simulation to try some of the ideas examined and create a new strategy to support delivery of the wider objectives set.

This course is designed for local authority staff who are seeking a better understanding of how to formulate a parking strategy that can support significant change in their areas and require an appreciation of alternative approaches and the evidence to shape a new parking strategy within their jurisdiction.

Similarly the course is relevant to consultants supporting local authorities in this function.

Course Format 

The course will consist of a mix of teaching with visual illustrations and several sessions of gaming to work through our collective attitudes to decisions on parking provision and what makes a successful town centre. The course will end with gamification using an interactive computer model to allow delegates to apply their learning and apply a chosen parking strategy for a simulated town as we fast forward through a number of forecast years. Their choices on parking pricing, restrictions, location of parking (including using park and ride) will be reflected in how users visit their towns, and how their town fares against the others.  

CPD Certificate of Attendance

Delegates will be awarded a certificate acknowledging successful completion of the workshop. There are no examinations.