End the Parking Plague

Akira Dunham argues that the removal of parking mandates is low-hanging fruit in the pursuit of more humane American cities.

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It will never stop to amaze me how much time and money Americans spend to visit walkable cities without ever thinking, “Hey…maybe we should replicate this at home.” Every year, millions across the U.S. will flock to cities across the world to feel the magic of being somewhere that is actually designed for a human. We love to romanticize the narrow, tree-lined streets of Tokyo or cobblestone alleys across Europe, and yet we still settle for this. 

This is America. Or at least the America we’ve drawn up for now. Most of us seem perfectly content with our home looking like this. For a nation brimming with so many bright, ambitious, and proud people, it’s pretty sad that this has become the norm.  

The road pictured above, with its multiple lanes, may have a high “Level of Service." LOS is a metric which has been enshrined by the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) as the gold standard for designing roadways. 

With rankings A through F, it was introduced as a method to measure motor vehicle traffic service and has created an incentive structure that awards the development of roadways that optimize for vehicular flow. This paradigm is promoted to transportation engineers studying across the country, training their attention on the flow of vehicles, rather than on what it feels like to actually exist in the space outside of a car. 

In my view, much of the best urban areas in the world reflect the principles of new urbanism. First arising in the 1980’s, new urbanism is a design philosophy that emphasizes walkable, interconnected neighborhoods, integrating a diverse mix of residential, commercial, and public spaces. By focusing on pedestrian-friendly environments, it aims to reduce reliance on cars, fostering a more sustainable, community-oriented urban life. This approach not only enhances quality of life and social interactions, but also contributes to environmental sustainability and urban vitality.           

Picture this: you hear the lapping of water against mossy stone steps and slender, wooden boats. Footsteps echo in the distance, reverberating off brickwork, and somewhere, a church bell tolls, its sound floating above a maze of canals.  

Where in America can a pedestrian reliably have this kind of experience? Answer: the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Building a proper city like this would likely be illegal in many parts of the country today.

It's telling that some of our best applications of the principles of New Urbanism are in artificial environments. At once comical, and a tragic reminder of what could be.

In most U.S. cities, the legal hurdles blocking the creation of walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods are practically insurmountable.

This is due to an array of zoning and land-use requirements that have led to the proliferation of auto-centric development. Strip malls, massive parking frontages, and wide highways have been cemented as the de-facto features of this style of planning. 

What Does “Good” Look like? 

“Good” looks like this street in Valencia, Spain. Trees along the street, a nice mix of materials for the roadway, and a good sense of enclosure.  

Key components of people-centric urban planning would include access to frequent transit, housing density, narrow and connected street networks, bike infrastructure, and street furniture. 

Luckily for us, most of what makes livable places functional is not rocket science. Although we have badly forgotten how to build cheaply, there is still time to build cities that are made for people, not cars. 

The Asphalt Albatross

Of all the perverse regulations that perpetuate the status quo, arguably the most frustrating are minimum parking requirements. Minimum parking requirements are local zoning regulations that mandate a specific number of parking spaces for new developments based on their size, use, or capacity. They are designed to ensure adequate parking and end up hindering flexibility in land use. 

Donald Shoup, a UCLA urban planning professor, perfectly distills the issues of parking requirements in his 1999 piece The Trouble with Minimum Parking Requirements. In one passage Shoup analogizes parking requirements to lead therapy, which was used for centuries as an antiseptic due to immediate observable benefits, but ignored the long term harm. 

“Like lead therapy, minimum parking requirements produce a local benefit–they ensure that every land use can accommodate all the cars "drawn to the site." But this local benefit comes at a high price to the whole city. Minimum parking requirements increase the density of both parking spaces and cars. More cars create more traffic congestion, which in turn provokes calls for more local remedies, such as street widening, intersection flaring, intelligent highways, and higher parking requirements. More cars also produce more exhaust emissions. Like lead therapy, minimum parking requirements produce a local benefit but damage the whole system.”

Perhaps parking minimums represent low-hanging fruit in the pursuit of more walkable cities. Cities like Buffalo and Hartford caught on to the possibility early, becoming the first U.S. cities to ban mandates on off-street parking.

Since then, over 50 cities have followed suit, realizing that many of the mandates put into place decades ago were arbitrary, tied to what they had heard other cities were doing.

The implications are broad, as the land can be repurposed into commercial, residential, or public spaces. This generates economic stimulus by increasing the value of land around the parking spaces. Since local governments don’t collect much in taxes on parking, it increases municipalities’ revenues too. Less available parking would also dissuade car traffic into urban centers, reducing congestion and making it easier to build public transit systems.      

Parking Reform in Action

Emerging as a focal point of many cities’ affordable housing strategies, parking reform has become a movement sweeping the nation. Its impact, however,  extends beyond housing, and facilitates improvements in other ways.

Anchorage, Alaska is one of the 50+ cities engaged in parking reform. With a unanimous, bipartisan vote within the assembly, the removal of parking minimums was seen as a step towards reducing housing prices. 

Now that its been nearly two years since the reform, it is clear the benefits extend beyond just affordable housing. Some of the locals are appreciating the change.

The results speak for themself. Allowing small businesses more flexibility to improve upon their land, adding more green space, and eliminating bureaucracy are all net positives for Anchorage. Above all, these changes show the city is generating a sense of place. Something many American cities have tragically lost. 

Austin, TX is another city that has engaged in parking reform. The city has branded itself as a progressive, forward thinking city with regards to urban design. With the city council voting 8-2 to eliminate parking minimums, Austin became one of the largest in the country to enact such a change. 

“It gobbles up scarce land. It adds burdensome costs to developments that get passed on to renters and buyers. It makes it harder for small businesses to get off the ground. And it harms walkability and actively works against our public investments in transit, bike lanes, trails and sidewalks,” Zohaib Qadai, Austin City Council Member

In classic Texan fashion, officials from city council positioned the move as a “free market” approach, indicating that developers can decide for themselves how much parking they need. Giving flexibility to developers to spur the creation of unique spaces, both in a housing and commercial context, can allow cities like Austin to continue to attract new businesses and retain a robust workforce. 

Despite the progress that has been made, there remains an incredible amount of untapped potential. Los Angeles County, for example, has 18.6 million parking spaces vs 3.5 million housing units. Researchers from UCLA also estimate that there are currently 3.3 parking spaces for each car in the county. 

For a city that has squandered the blessings of prime geographical and climate benefits, there remains a serious opportunity to stem the current housing crisis via altering mandates around parking. By repurposing parking into cheap and affordable housing, developers can take advantage of the new affordable housing incentives. Imagine LA if it was less like a parking lot and reflected more of the simplicity and beauty of the European cities we flock to every year. 

While building new housing, creating public spaces, and other methods of improving the built environment require significant capital investment, banning parking mandates are free. They demand no additional direct capital expenditures from taxpayers or municipalities.

Cities can leave it to the market to determine how much parking space is actually needed instead of mandating some arbitrary amount. Employers, businesses, and entrepreneurs can offer parking for a fee, allowing supply and demand dynamics to dictate how much space is allocated at a given cost. 

Of course, there will be pain in the interim as cities adjust to the new paradigm. Our infrastructure has been designed to accommodate a car-dominant transportation model; our cities have grown around cars for decades. Think of the removal of parking minimums as a simple, and powerful forcing function. It is a simple legislative update that will set in motion a series of adaptations that will take time to resolve. It will be uncomfortable in some cases, but when all is said and done, we will be closer to having cities that feel more natural to the human condition.

With the courage to remove outdated parking minimums, maybe we wouldn’t have to choose between paradise and parking lots.  

This article was adapted from an earlier essay written by Akira, with the author's permission.

All opinions expressed here are solely of the author and do not reflect the views of the author’s employer. 

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