How Eliminating Parking Minimums Actually Makes Cities Better | Article

Parking is so prevalent in many cities around the United States because of zoning laws called parking minimums, which mandate a certain amount of off-street parking for new projects. Parking minimums can prevent city officials from encouraging public transportation and reducing local emissions, a form of planning called transit-oriented development (TOD). Cities that center TOD incentivize walking and biking, while also minimizing car traffic, carbon emissions, and noise.

The urban sprawl of Los Angeles at night.

TOD promotes a diversity of residential and commercial buildings and enables cities to adapt to different forms and times for public transit. But parking minimums can force urban planners to use land inefficiently, making it difficult to design neighborhoods where it is easy for people to walk and use public transit to get around. This also can lead to a form of development called urban sprawl. Sprawl refers to unplanned, low-density development surrounding urban population centers. It’s characterized by single-family housing, automobile dependency, and residential development along highways and major roads.

Reducing the amount of parking in urban spaces can also greatly improve the quality of urban landscapes. From an environmental standpoint, lower automobile use per capita helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from cars around population centers. Additionally, decreasing the amount of built infrastructure like parking and roads can reduce the heat island effect , which is when cities are hotter than surrounding areas because of all the heat the infrastructure retains.

Replacing parking lots with green spaces like parks can also improve local water quality and facilitate stormwater management through absorbing and filtering rainwater. There would also be less oil pollution in the stormwater, which runs off from the surface of parking lots.

The benefits of parking reform don’t end with the environment. Parking reform can also drastically reduce the costs associated with development projects. According to a report on parking published by the Environmental Protection Agency, fees for structured, on-site parking range from $2,000 to $20,000 per space on average. Excessive parking requirements also reduce the amount of leasable space available in a building.

Focusing on TOD and reducing parking minimums also promotes greater social equity in a community. Parking requirements raise rent prices and inhibit the development of affordable housing. Tenants who might not even own cars are often still expected to cover the costs of parking in their rent, which can increase the price of rent by 17 percent. Moreover, sprawling cities often necessitate cars for short commutes, making it difficult for working families to travel without an automobile. Promoting TOD and reducing parking minimums can decrease the cost of living for low-income families.

The parking space in Hartford grew enormously between 1960 and 2000. Graphic courtesy of Norman Garrick.

Some cities—such as Hartford, Connecticut, and Buffalo, New York—have eliminated mandatory parking minimums. In Hartford, for example, the abolition of parking minimums has already sped up building rehabilitation projects, and the decision will hopefully draw in more revenue to the city through improved land use practices and increasing bus and rail lines. Many other cities have also done away with parking minimums in some if not all of the city.

As long as disadvantageous zoning ordinances such as parking minimums stand in the way of TOD, urban centers across the country will continue to incur the environmental, economic, and social costs of parking. It is time local policymakers take a closer look at parking in order to elevate their cities and plan for safer, smarter, and more successful cities.

Author: Hamzah Jhaveri