Parking minimum
2022-02-12 → 2026-08-14
Many places in the U.S. have a parking minimum regulation, which states that a business (or any building) must build a certain minimum parking facility. The original intension was to prevent the situation where there’s not enough parking and cars overflow into nearby roads and other buildings.
However, a critical assumption behind this is that more or less everyone drives and will drive. An important unintended consequence is that more parking you provide, you induce more demand for driving. Moreover, Free parking is not free. It is expensive.
Parking minimum has been identified as a big contributor to car-centric urban design and a negative contributor to the local economy. Simply put, Parking destroys cities.
- Analysis: The Decline and Fall of Mandatory Parking Minimums
- Spotting Opportunities to Transform Underutilized Sites uses Ferry Street Flats, a student-housing project in Eugene, as a concrete case: eliminating parking minimums let a constrained former-duplex lot support 65 units because structured parking would otherwise have consumed budget and buildable area.
https://parkingreform.org is an organization that helps activists and professionals regarding parking policies and laws.
To read#
- https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/11/23/a-new-way-to-look-at-minimum-parking-requirements
- https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/11/22/what-comes-next-after-abolishing-parking-mandates
Urban design, Free parking, Parking destroys cities