The Parking Crises — Male’ City

The lack of space for parking has become a major problem in Male’ City and if one really try to look deep into this problem, it is not just an issue here, in-fact every urbanised cities in the world is facing this problem.

Different countries are trying to address the issue in different ways, but over the last few years everyone has moved towards one solution. But before we go into the solution, let’s understand the problem at hand.

Every city in the world, which is either the business district or the only developed city — would tend to attract an inward migration which is much higher and with this comes the growing needs for essential necessities and life transforming into a fast paced one. Fast paced life demands fast paced solutions to issues and this is where private owned vehicles drop in!

Most Cities which had never planned for such onslaught growth both in population influx and demands, without keeping into consideration factors such as traffic, would need to find innovate solutions to the growing pressing issues. Everyone knew that Male’ was never a well-planned city, it accepted growth as how it came and with concrete structures taking over and air pollution rising, the need to focus towards a green city was on pipeline but at the same time, there was shortage for parking spaces considering the number of private vehicle boom the country is seeing at the moment.

In average, every other person who is employed or who can afford has a motorbike and now it is like every household has a car for themselves. These are trends that are growing and most countries have adopted the method of capping vehicles and putting a tax system, which disincentives individuals to go for owning private vehicles.

The high business zones for any cities is referred as downtown and the traffic in the downtown is almost a nightmare. When I travelled to New York, it was interesting to see that in New Jersey, there was a huge parking bay for vehicles to park as the NY impose heavy tolls for private vehicles to drive into the city. The same was seen in London and the city have even imposed a congestion charge (CCZ) to vehicles that drive into the city centre.

But our problem here is that we are still looking for short term solutions to larger big issues, for instances we are looking to convert the spaces to parking lots, which would again discourage pedestrians and add more heat with random open spaces and lack of green space for people to walk around.

If this city needs to survive, then it has to work on real solutions than just coming with temporary solutions which also doesn’t come with a small budget line.

1. Relocating the Government Offices far from Commercial / Business district:

The government needs to focus on shifting its infrastructure out from downtown or the city center to another location where there is more breathing space for better and smart development. Like how Battaramulla a suburb of Colombo is been developed to campus all government offices and agencies. It is similar to how Putrajaya was developed away from KL to take the congestion off.

2. Public Transportation:

This is one of the main essential elements for any cities to reduce its traffic by introducing a more effective and reliable public transportation system which the public can rely on. Without this, there is no way that the growing number of private vehicles can be curbed.

3. MaaS Movement:

Maldives need to introduce the Mobility as a Service Movement, which is something that the whole world is moving towards now but for this the public transportation needs to be in place.

4. Define Downtown and regulating the area.

5. Better Landuse Plan for Greater Male’ Region:

Developing more green space and pedestrian friendly walkways so that people can take that as an alternative route. Because of our tropical nature like how many of our neighbouring countries did, the walkways connecting places are even covered with pedestrian bridges or covered with roofing’s.

6. Building Code:

Every residential building to be approved to have parking space within the building as how it’s done in most congested cities in the world. This also means that the real estate developers need to follow the same suit.

These are just some thoughts that I hope the Municipality or even the government could consider before working on converting spaces to parking lots, which is not the solution as always. Once again are just thoughts, there would be much better solutions or ways to handle this. But instead of constant bickering and pointing fingers, I am just laying out my thoughts.