The other weird thing the city seems to not be able to wrap its head around is that its role is two-fold: regulator of the land use decisions and investor who owns parking lots nearby.
So not only is a temporary parking lot against policy, bad for city development objectives and against community wishes, it also competes directly with the city's own parking nearby - notably the mega-garage on 10th Ave and all street parking in the vicinity. The public loses from both angles.
I am only a tiny bit joking here - if I was the public parking authority I would actively fight every single parking lot proposal within walking distance. I mean, we have already decided that the public should be a market actor in the parking lots, why not actually act like a market actor and protect our investment? The CPA should appeal every new stall in a development within 800m of their monster garages. I am sure there's some silly policy/bureaucracy rules in the parking authority bylaw that prevents them from acting like this ... but who cares? We are already ignoring policy here anyways.
At the risk of once again echoing the great Donald Shoup - the problem is foundational: parking policies are nonsensical at their core. The planning authority and the city play both sides of the coin to perverse and non-sensical outcomes.
With respect to parking, we are a regulator that doesn't regulate to the outcomes we say we want; we are also a market participant that owns a bunch of parking garages that doesn't act in our own best interests for our investments.
