Introduction

Think about the last time you drove somewhere with several stops close together. You parked, finished the first errand, then got back in the car and drove a few blocks to the next one, where you looked for parking all over again. People do this even when the destinations are an easy walk apart. Once a car is parked, moving it again is a decision about distance, time, and whether the walk seems worth it.

A Park and Walk program is designed around that decision. The city sets aside a lot where the first 90 minutes are free and places it close to a commercial district, so a visitor can leave the car once and reach several destinations on foot. The free window is what attracts people, but whether they walk once they arrive depends on what surrounds the lot.

Public health agencies have promoted walking for a long time because it asks for no equipment, no membership, and no training. It does require somewhere to walk to. A walk to a bakery, a bank, and a bookstore is easier to sustain than a trip to a gym, since it comes attached to something a person was going to do anyway. Cities are interested in the transportation side of the same idea. Repeated short car trips between nearby businesses add traffic to a few congested blocks, and drivers searching for a space add still more.

None of this works if the lot is in the wrong place. A property might be too small for the number of vehicles the program expects. It might sit far from the destinations people want to reach, or on a street that makes walking unpleasant. It might be zoned for a use that does not permit a parking facility. Deciding where the lot belongs means comparing properties against conditions that are all spatial, which is the kind of question a geographic information system is built to answer.

In this activity, you take the role of the analyst assigned to that problem. You will receive the planning criteria and all of the data you need. You will not receive a procedure. Working out how to find the property is your responsibility. A generative AI assistant will help you develop the approach.

Scenario

Where should Pasadena locate a Park and Walk lot so that visitors can park once and safely walk to several destinations? Answering that question requires planners to consider land use, transportation access, nearby destinations, and the physical characteristics of available properties.

The City of Pasadena is considering a Park and Walk program as one part of a broader effort to promote healthy lifestyles. A Park and Walk lot would provide free parking for the first 90 minutes, encouraging visitors to walk to nearby businesses and points of interest. Before the city invests in a new facility, planners need to identify a property that satisfies the program's location, size, transportation access, and zoning requirements.

Your task is to identify one property for a potential Park and Walk lot in either Pasadena or South Pasadena. The property must satisfy every requirement below:

Throughout this lab, property refers to a real-world site, while parcel refers to the corresponding polygon feature in the supplied GIS data.

The property must be within Pasadena or South Pasadena.
The property must have an area greater than 3,000 square meters.
The property must be within 100 meters of at least one of the following streets:
- Fair Oaks Avenue
- North Fair Oaks Avenue
- South Fair Oaks Avenue
- Colorado Boulevard
- East Colorado Boulevard
- West Colorado Boulevard
The property must be within 300 meters of an existing bikeway.
The property must have one of the following zoning codes:
- C4
- CD-5 AD-2
- PS

Note: CD-5 AD-2 is one zoning code, not two separate codes.

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After all other requirements have been satisfied, select the property with the greatest number of points of interest within 200 meters.