The “parking problem” in Coatesville and the somewhat racist Municipal Planning Code.

Just driving through Coatesville on any day and seeing more than 100 unused metered parking stalls should be enough to understand that Coatesville doesn’t need more parking stalls.

But we keep seeing calls that there is not enough parking. 

Here is why:

FHA loans helped to build suburban developments like Levittown. 

Until the civil rights legislation came into effect in the 1960s black people could not obtain an FHA loan. 

Beginning back in the 1930s and culminating after WWII the Federal Housing Authority gave birth to the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Code.  

One way to think of the Municipal Planning Code is:

Spread white people out, separate industrial and business from residential and connect them with arterial roads so they can survive aerial bombardment while keeping black people (targets) jammed together in cities. 

The thing is, the use of the hydrogen bomb causing the universal extinction of mankind obliterated the somewhat racist national defense reasoning behind the Municipal Planning Code. 

All developments try to comply with the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Code. The PA MPC doesn’t apply in Coatesville’s downtown and I think it doesn’t apply anywhere inside the city. If we strictly followed the PA Municipal Planning Code the Lincoln Highway in Coatesville would be a series of strip malls. We have zoning overlays to get around the PA MPC for parts of Coatesville. 

We don't need more parking in Coatesville. Coatesville isn't a spread apart suburban township. 

You can drive down any older Pennsylvania town and see the municipal planning practice, that in PA came mostly from German settlers. People mostly walked to stores for shopping. Stores delivered what they picked out. It worked for centuries and it still works. Those small stores might be the only kind of stores people 40 years from now will shop at. 

More about what Coatesville should be doing to benefit from the commerce coming in the near future in a coming post.

OK, I used the term “parking stalls” because that’s what Betsy and I call them. We were born in the early 1940s. My children fall on the ground laughing when we say it.