By some estimates, there are 2 billion parking spots scattered across the country. This equates to approximately 7 spaces per car, which adds up to an area the size of West Virginia.
For some people, that may be too much.
Housing advocates, environmentalists and real estate developers say eliminating the space would give much-needed space for housing development and make cities more walkable and less dependent on cars. claims.
“Having some parking is important,” said Dirk Overabaugh, head of global advisory services at real estate analysis firm Green Street. “But does it have to be what we've had historically? I think the answer is no.”
Since the nonprofit organization Strong Towns began its research a decade ago, hundreds of cities and municipalities have rescinded or completely scrapped requirements for real estate projects. In 2022 alone, 15 municipalities have abolished parking regulations, including San Jose, California, Raleigh, North Carolina, and Lexington, Kentucky. In late 2023, Austin became the largest U.S. city to eliminate minimum parking regulations. And in December, the New York City Council introduced a policy that would reduce or eliminate parking requirements for new homes in some parts of the city.
What happened in those places?
Many of these cities have only recently introduced this change, so the evidence is limited, but some studies show that more housing was built as a result of the rules being repealed. I am. For example, in New York, Seattle, and Buffalo, reducing or eliminating minimum standards encouraged housing development that was not possible under previous mandates.
However, like most policy changes that affect the daily lives of a wide range of people, changes to parking rules have also been met with pushback from residents, with the loosening of requirements reducing overall parking and resulting in less traffic for motorists. There are concerns that there will be an influx of people. Find a space on the street.
Christoph Spieler, a structural engineer and urban planner at the Rice School of Architecture in Houston, says such concerns about inconvenience and congestion are not unfounded.
“I think we certainly find ourselves in situations where we have to walk farther to get to a parking lot, or take a longer detour to get to a parking lot, or have to plan a little bit longer about where we're going to park. ” he says. Especially during peak demand times.
In response to an article about Dallas moving closer to eliminating minimum parking fees, Facebook users complained about the cost of spending time and gas while looking for a parking spot, or even staying several blocks away from their destination. Complaining about having to park. One person said, “Parking in Austin is a nightmare. The street I lived on was always parked and I had a hard time getting out of my driveway.”
But Spieler argued that perhaps mandating an arbitrary amount of parking would not address people's complaints about available space. “It’s not just a question of quantity, it’s also a question of management,” he said. “A big part of that is managing street parking properly,” he said, something many cities are failing to do.
sea of asphalt
After World War II, as automobiles became the primary mode of transportation, cities began adding parking requirements to ease road congestion. By 1969, nearly all municipalities with populations of 25,000 or more had minimum parking requirements for many buildings, including hair salons and bowling alleys.
Housing advocates, developers, and urban activists who envision a less car-centric cityscape argue that the rules have little or no bearing on actual parking needs. For example, the Parking Reform Network, a nonprofit organization that supports the end of minimum parking regulations, says the minimum parking regulations for bowling alleys in three similarly sized towns within 40 kilometers of each other in California range from 2 to 5 cars per lane. It is pointed out that it is within the range of 1. Residential parking minimums are often set based on the number of bedrooms, but critics say the minimum amount is significantly inflated because many families have children too young to drive. have pointed out.
A 2022 study by the Regional Planning Association, a nonprofit organization focused on the New York City region, found that more low-income housing was being built in urban neighborhoods with relaxed parking requirements. did.
Seattle is considered a pioneer in parking policy, taking an incremental approach. In 2012, the city relaxed minimum regulations for downtown neighborhoods and areas served by public transportation. And in 2018, we expanded our approach to more locations and types of developments. About 60 percent of the housing developed in Seattle since the changes were implemented would not have been possible under the old rules, according to a 2023 study by the Sightline Institute, a think tank that advocates for sustainability in the Pacific Northwest. It is said that it was.
“The problem is when the market requires a lot of parking that it doesn't want, and it just increases development costs,” said Jenny Schuetz, who until recently was a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution's Cities Policy Program. he says. About housing and land use policy. And in many cases, that cost is passed on to tenants, she says.
Daniel Hess, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo, found in a 2021 study that about half of the new developments built since the city lifted minimum parking regulations in 2017 had no prior parking requirements. It turned out that there were fewer parking spaces than there were. And a Sightline investigation found that nearly 70 percent of the homes built in Buffalo since 2017 would have been illegal under the old parking regulations.
“It helps free up land that was previously a parking lot,” Hess said. “This is the simplest zoning reform. Minimum parking requirements are doing a lot of harm. There's a lot of asphalt.”
Excess asphalt and concrete surfaces have been shown to contribute to increased temperatures and flood risk.
a particularly difficult battle
In November 2023, Austin, Texas became the largest city in the United States to eliminate parking requirements. Supporters of the move hope it will have the dual effect of giving developers the freedom to build more buildings and allowing them to look at land currently used as parking lots with fresh eyes. are. One of the parcels being considered for development is a half-acre property in downtown Austin that is currently used as an overflow parking lot for a Lutheran church.
“It's very important to me that the city stop forcing developers to build parking garages that they don't want to build,” said Austin City Council member Zoe Kadri, who wrote the proposal to eliminate the parking garages. It's a necessary burden.” minimum.
But despite these benefits, the rules can be difficult to eliminate. Even in a city like Seattle, where many residents are concerned about the environmental impact of driving, public comments submitted on development plans speak for themselves. In 2022, several residents objected to a proposal to build nine homes with five parking spaces on a vacant lot.
One resident said: “Vehicles associated with this residence are not welcome on my street. Our parking is already very limited.”
Another wrote: “The parking situation in this area is only getting worse and it is dangerous to see an increase in on-street parking or spillover of parking needs onto neighboring streets.”
Similar things are being repeated in other cities and in response to other development plans. Residents have expressed concerns about cars continuing to drive through neighborhoods looking for parking spaces, and about not being able to find convenient parking themselves. This concern may be even greater in areas with high concentrations of elderly people and families with young children. Some residents complain that illegally parked cars block their driveways and that increased traffic creates dangerous conditions for pedestrians and cyclists.
Conflicts over parking often occur, especially in historic or redeveloped areas. Narrow streets that predate the advent of automobiles do not always accommodate parking, and parking is unlikely to be part of the existing design.
Dallas City Councilman Chad West supports eliminating minimum parking fees in the city and said cities could use parking policies as incentives. West said the city could propose relaxing parking requirements in exchange for preserving buildings of historical or architectural significance. (The Zoning Commission voted in January 2024 to move forward with a proposal to eliminate Dallas' minimum parking regulations.)
There's also the desirability factor. As people visit locations for shopping, dining, and sightseeing, the demand for parking increases.
“We also want readily available parking and an easy-to-drive diagonal location, but we still want a cute, small, historic building,” said Spieler, of Houston's Rice School of Architecture. I also want space,” he said. “We need to recognize that there are trade-offs here.”
