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Tag minimum parking requirements

yes, minimum parking requirements do limit development

I and many other scholars have argued that minimum parking requirements increase the cost of housing (by taking up land for parking that could be used for housing, and by imposing costs that are passed on to consumers), increase the costs of doing business, and create a variety of other social harms. One occasional counterargument is that because most people drive to work and other destinations, developers would build lots of parking even if such parking was not legally mandated. A recent study discussed in Transfers Magazine shows otherwise, by focusing on recent reforms in Seattle. That city eliminated parking requirements in its most dense areas and reduced parking requirements in some other areas. If minimum parking requirements were irrelevant to developer decisions, developers would have built as much parking as they did before the reforms. In fact, this was not the case. For example, in areas where no parking was required, 30 percent of residential developers built parking-free housing. Even developers who built some parking usually built less than was required under pre-reform standards.

New Report by CMU and AHLA: The Case for Ending Parking Requirements in Downtown Los Angeles

The Center for Market Urbanism released its first policy report in partnership with Abundant Housing Los Angeles.  The paper, written by The Center for Market Urbanism’s Nolan Gray and Emily Hamilton, recommends eliminating minimum parking requirements as part of DTLA 2040, a process which will update both the Central City and Central City North community plans. The draft concept for the DTLA 2040 plan calls for eliminating parking requirements for the Central City and Central City North neighborhoods.  This would build upon the success of Los Angeles’ adaptive reuse, allowing new developments to facilitate affordable, dense, walkable neighborhoods. The paper discusses the history of parking requirements, burdens and damage caused by current parking requirements, and benefits of reforms: Combined with demand-based pricing for on-street parking, the elimination of parking requirements will allow for downtown neighborhoods that are more walkable while also reducing congestion for drivers. Read the Center for Market Urbanism/Abundant Housing LA Policy Paper here   The Center for Market Urbanism is a 501c3 organization dedicated to expanding choice, affordability, and prosperity in cities through smart reforms to U.S. land-use regulation. Abundant Housing LA is 501c3 organization which is committed to advocating for more housing. We want lower rents and a more sustainable and prosperous region, where everyone has more choices of where to live and how to pursue their dreams. LA is one of the most diverse, vibrant cities in America, and we are fighting to keep it that way for current Angelenos, our children, and those who come here to pursue their dreams.  

How Suburban Parking Requirements Hold Back Downtown

A large, empty parking lot

You wake up thirty minutes before your alarm, jerking up after having a nightmare about a car crash. Reluctantly, you clean up, eat breakfast, and hop into your car. Work is only three mile away—easy biking distance—and there are 15 or so people in your neighborhood who work where you work—enough for a commuter bus make sense. But alas, the city required the developer to provide two parking spaces for your townhouse and the cost is hidden somewhere in your mortgage, so why not use it? After spending thirty minutes traveling three miles on the freeway—at least we live in the Golden Age of Podcasting, right?—you arrive at your suburban office park and pull into the garage. The parking is “free,” meaning that your pay has already been docked to cover the cost of the space, so why not use it? Your girlfriend calls shortly after lunch, asking if you want to go on a double dinner date with her friends to a new BBQ place downtown. You agree to join. You’re starving—you left lunch at home and it’s just too time consuming to drive to a decent place—so you hustle downtown. You arrive first, only to find out that there is only on-street parking. Downtown is, after all, exempt from parking requirements, and since street parking is “free,” it’s impossible to find a space during dinner time. You call your dinner partners—each of them is driving separately from work—and suggest another BBQ place downtown that offers subsidized garage parking. This place is a little more expensive, since the restaurateur has to cover some of the cost of offering parking, but you’re all hungry and don’t want to deal with the headache of cruising for street parking. Eventually you all meet and enjoy a nice meal, speculating about how traffic […]

How Lexington Can Expand Affordable Housing (Without Touching the UGB)

  Lexington, Kentucky is a wonderful place, and that’s getting to be a problem. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the city: its urban amenities, thriving information economy, and unique local culture have brought in throngs of economic migrants from locales as exotic as Appalachia, Mexico, and the Rust Belt. The problem, rather, is that the city isn’t zoned to support this newfound attention. Over the past five years, the city has grown by an estimated 18,000 residents, putting Lexington’s population at approximately 314,488. Lexington has nearly tripled in size since 1970 and the trend shows no signs of stopping, with an estimated 100,000 new residents arriving by 2030. Despite this growth, new development has largely lagged behind: despite the boom in new residents, the city has only permitted the construction of 6,021 new housing units over the past five years—not an awful ratio when compared to a San Francisco, but still putting us firmly on the path toward shortages. The lion’s share of this new development has taken the form of new single-family houses on the periphery of town. Create your own infographics. Sources: ACS/Census Bureau   At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with single-family housing on the periphery of town. Yet in the case of Lexington, it’s suspect as a sustainable source of affordable housing. Lexington was the first American city to adopt an urban growth boundary (UGB), a now popular land-use regulation that limits outward urban expansion. As originally conceived, the UGB program isn’t such a bad idea: the city would simultaneously preserve nearby farmland and natural areas (especially important for Lexington, given our idyllic surrounding countryside) while easing restrictions on infill development. Create your own infographics. Source: Census Bureau   The trouble with Lexington is that the city has undertaken […]

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