The city council in Austin, Texas recently proposed something that could seem like political Kryptonite: getting rid of parking minimums.
Those are the rules that dictate how much off-street parking developers must provide — as in, a certain number of spaces for every apartment and business.
Around the country, cities are throwing out their own parking requirements – hoping to end up with less parking, more affordable housing, better transit, and walkable neighborhoods.
I am excited to see how these cities change in the coming decades. Hopefully this helps us get better cities!
Will the use this newfound space to make the lives of the citizens or the lives of the corporations better?
I know where my bets are, on average.
Given that parking minimums (and cars in general) are a very recent development in the context of all urban history and that, last I checked, we did, in fact, have cities before the 1940s, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that this isn’t a recipe for some new corporate hellscape.
Funnily enough, parking minimums were only developed in the first place so that businesses could attract wealthy white suburbanites as they fled cities, so if you really want a social justice framing, this is essentially undoing one of the core relics of white flight.
No, parking minimums were created because people were just parking their shit wherever the fuck they wanted, to the point that streets became unusable.
There’s one way to find out: See what the results have been in cities that have already eliminated parking minimums.
Cities are trash now, this will only make them worse because corporations are stupid. The new process will look like this:
tell me you never been to a city outside the americas without saying you never been to a city outside america.
Mixed use zoning is mostly resilient on this problem. But yeah if cities don’t also fix zoning laws to ensure most destinations are accessible without cars there will be more pains.
businesses are not that stupid. They will look at how customers get there. They know that customers who drive will mostly not go there if parking is too difficult. Customers who walk (take transit…) though will be happy to have have to walk across that parking lot, so if those are your customers get rid of the parking lot to make customers happy. If customers bike, then bike parking is important. They then will make what they think is the correct trade off.
Sure if there is no parking some people who really like your business will park on the street. However unless you have a rare niche most people will just go to a competitor.
This makes cities better as excess parking - means the city is less dense and transit works best with dense cities. Just a few parking lots converted to something else where there is already density (all cities have some place dense enough for this!) makes it easier for great transit to happen in the city.