parking minimums

Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile

by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek  · 21 Oct 2025  · 330pp  · 85,349 words

we price parking—or, let’s call it what it is, “car storage”—has catalyzed an international movement to reform building codes that call for parking minimums in new residential, retail, and office developments. After a century of building more and more spots in the hopes of finding a place to put

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or traffic-calming infrastructure that makes direct use of curb space. But the ramifications are far more pervasive than that. Most cities have so-called parking minimums, codes requiring new developments of any kind to provide off-street parking for a given number of vehicles per residential unit or per expected shopper

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how many parking spaces are required. But you have to do it…. Everyone wants to park free, including you and me.” The fake science of parking minimums, over the decades, has led to acres of surface parking lots, downtowns where parking garages dominate the streets, and higher costs for developers. It’s

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parking policy on “climate change, equity, housing, and traffic,” as well as to support and push for the adoption of parking reforms. This fight against parking minimums might have seemed like a quixotic quest when the organization was founded, in 2019, by Tony Jordan, who calls himself a “full-time parking reformer

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and rabble-rouser.” But the Parking Reform Network now can point to ninety-one (and counting) examples of cities around the world eliminating their parking minimums. The movement has been spreading across the country, and the cities and towns in question represent a true cross section of America—red counties and

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advocate for change no matter the community they are fighting for.” The italics are hers, and the point deserves the emphasis. If the rejection of parking minimums continues to spread at its current pace, it will mean that in all kinds of communities all over, a fundamental shift in thinking will have

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

by Henry Grabar  · 8 May 2023  · 413pp  · 115,274 words

dangerous,” he told me, a little dramatically. * * * — The idea of parking minimums, proposed in the twenties, rolled out in the thirties, and expanded nationwide in the forties and fifties, was obviously enticing: cities could force the private

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the confidence, specificity, and evidence of a medieval alchemist, exactly how much parking must accompany a given land use. Their exactitude is mathematical. But the parking minimums that govern development in every American city, Shoup discovered, were not very good. The idea was bad and the execution was worse. Instead, he wrote

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in High Cost, parking minimums displayed “a breathtaking combination of extreme precision and statistical insignificance.” A typically prolix and arcane document governed construction in the city of Detroit, which requires

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hood of the car and it’s this junk engine made of Styrofoam cups and straws.” It was not just that the parking minimums were bogus. The very idea of parking minimums was backward. The ITE was not the only compendium of bad parking advice. A similar survey on commercial parking was published by

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, distorted by misleading evidence, and implemented without examination, where they had molded a half century of architecture literally built around (or, more often, surrounded by) parking minimums. The American modernist Louis Sullivan said form follows function; Don Shoup said form follows parking requirements. “Free parking has become the arbiter of urban form

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wrote. In 2019, fourteen years after Shoup’s book came out, ITE president Bruce Belmore renounced the idea of mandatory parking minimums in a preface to the organization’s monthly journal. “Parking minimums make some broad assumptions, including the idea that all homeowners can afford a car, want to pay for a parking stall

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that cities did to battle the midcentury parking shortage, one I haven’t yet mentioned: they installed parking meters. Unlike urban renewal, public garages, and parking minimums, parking meters were not an attempt to compete with the suburbs on their own terms. They recognized that curb space was worth something, that cities

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to jump-start the country’s creation of affordable housing in cities where new supply had all but dried up. Eliminating parking minimums was one of the suggestions. Chapter 10 Parkitecture Parking minimums had not just changed the feel of the street, the density of buildings, the cost of housing, and how much people

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and the sidewalk. Parking determined the concert schedule, the ticket policy at the museum, whether you could open a restaurant or renovate an abandoned building. Parking minimums were such a ubiquitous force in the city’s recent development that it was hard to know with certainty their influence—perhaps people just wanted

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really the architecture of parking requirements. Buildings that repel each other like magnets of the same pole. Parking minimums were like “dark energy,” Don Shoup wrote, that hidden force that powers the expansion of the universe. Parking minimums powered the expansion of the city. In 1968, the architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

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huge driveways cannibalized street parking). Builders adapted with side and rear parking, though that often meant less space for apartments. In 1964, LA increased its parking minimums to require 1.5 spaces per two-bedroom apartment. Ding-dong, the dingbat was dead.[*] When parking came calling, green space was often the first

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about, was that Los Angeles was the least affordable city in the United States. Parking was one reason why. * * * To really grasp the impact of parking minimums, you had to see what happened when they disappeared. In 1999, Carol Schatz got Los Angeles to pass an Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (ARO) for downtown

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of a better world through better parking: more affordable housing, more new businesses, more historic reuse, more walkable neighborhoods, less time behind the wheel. Downtown parking minimums were abolished in New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Austin, and Fargo. Parking near transit was made newly optional in New York City, Sacramento, Indianapolis, and San Diego

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parking variance for small parcels produced a boom in small-lot houses, little teeth growing into a block’s broken smile. Austin and Boston scrapped parking minimums for affordable housing. In city after city, reformers were getting their way. The Shoupistas were designers, environmentalists, developers, planners, pedestrians, and small-business owners. Restaurateurs

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to the Congress for New Urbanism, the movement for traditional town building founded by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany, who with Jeff Speck called parking minimums the “single greatest killer of urbanism in the United States today.” Chrissy Mancini Nichols was working for the Chicago Metropolitan Planning Council, a regional think

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new apartments Chicago’s parking-heavy rules were suppressing. In 2015, citing an MPC study and quoting the organization’s president, the Emanuel administration eliminated parking minimums on nine square miles of land on or near Chicago transit. The ordinance covered only a tiny fraction of Chicago’s 218 square miles, but

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rules. The uprising Ginger Hitzke faced in Solana Beach, it turned out, put that city in impromptu alignment with many communities that had deliberately used parking minimums to banish affordable housing. Deliberately or not, reformers seized on this fact in Minneapolis and elsewhere: more parking meant less housing, and that was reason

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enough to do away with parking minimums. When I starting writing this book in 2019, I lived in an area of Chicago called Edgewater. It was one of relatively few integrated areas

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undertaken since the Buffalo reform, half of new major developments came with fewer spaces than had been required. In Seattle, developers taking advantage of reduced parking minimums built 40 percent less parking than would have been required. Over five years, the reform lowered the cost to build new apartments by approximately half

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parking reform in Dallas. Cary Westerbeck, a PRN member and architect in the Seattle suburb of Bothell who had seen his own projects thwarted by parking minimums, suggested that his local busybody group—Bothellites for People-Oriented Places—should just help people park their cars. He’d start a valet service to

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parking requirements in Edina, Minnesota, and Bend, Oregon. Lori Droste, a council member in Berkeley, California, had succeeded in a five-year effort to eliminate parking minimums in her city. “Y’all are my kind of people, golly!” she told the assembly. “I can help you figure out how to talk about

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feedback. Thousands of parking apostles, from coast to coast, were trying to turn the page on a century of American city building. They were undoing parking minimums and fighting new public garages; they were drumming up support for parking meters, shared parking, parking benefit districts, bus lanes, bike lanes, and all the

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final sessions of his course, as students presented their reports on a bill in the California legislature that would free all development near transit from parking minimums. The bill passed the State Assembly during the class to applause. A year later, Governor Gavin Newsom abolished parking requirements near transit in California and

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,” the eighty-four-year-old told a reporter. “It makes me feel grateful for longevity.” Chapter 12 The Market: Parking after Minimums Starting around 2015, parking minimums began to fall in city after city. But for every downtown LA, where parking-free architecture burst forth, there was another place where changing the

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to worry about city laws. Putting Shoup into practice wasn’t always so simple. In Austin, Texas, for example, a trio of reformers quietly banished parking minimums from downtown in 2013. But Austin did not have scores of old office buildings to convert, like Los Angeles, and it did not have a

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wave of parking-free apartments didn’t come. Builders kept building as they had before—a sign that the habits formed under seventy years of parking minimums would be hard to unlearn. The office-tower Brancusi was exhibit A. Local real estate people would say, “Even if you don’t want parking

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the bones to support a car-free life; those were exactly the neighborhoods where rents were highest, and many barely permitted new housing at all. Parking minimums were not the only thing standing between the status quo and the revival of vibrant, walkable cities. For a builder, excising even surplus parking was

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romance of rooftop parking in downtown Chicago.) Cunningham said his data made a convincing presentation to city planners, who in their hearts often knew that parking minimums were not good policy. Unlike with residential projects, there were no neighbors to placate when you built offices, and he was routinely getting variances to

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much of the twentieth century, America exported its car culture. Suburban, car-centric retail had sprouted in cities around the world, borrowing American standards for parking minimums. (In Germany, the Nazis seem to have developed the idea independently.) Just as Victor Gruen had unhappily confronted his own creation in the suburbs of

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down what had once been congested avenues. Mexico City adopted a Ciclovía-type event every Sunday on its grand Paseo de la Reforma and eliminated parking minimums. All along the streets of our cities, and in a good many public plazas and parks as well, we had consigned a vast amount of

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bicycles) that it no longer served as a useful point of comparison—too unrealistic. In 2004, the Greater London Authority replaced the UK capital’s parking minimums with maximums. Nearly every London borough followed suit. The amount of parking that had once been mandated was now a hard limit. In the seven

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something else can take its place. * * * — At times, as I reported and wrote this book, the path forward from a policy perspective seemed clear. Abolish parking minimums and let developers build the amount of parking their clients want. Break garage rents apart from apartment rents so carless tenants don’t have to

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, metroplanning.org/uploads/cms/documents/2015_tod_ordinance_impacts_mpc_analysis.pdf. Go to note reference in text The share of large buildings: Borna Khoshand, “Parking Minimums Hold Developers Back: Examining the Impact of TOD Ordinances,” Streetsblog Chicago, January 26, 2021, chi.streetsblog.org/2021/01/26

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/parking-minimums-are-holding-developers-back-examining-the-impact-of-chicagos-tod-ordinances. Go to note reference in text “The joke is”: Paul Sajovec, interview with the

Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World

by Sara C. Bronin  · 30 Sep 2024  · 230pp  · 74,949 words

. Pavement traps heat, adding to the urban heat-island effect, which is the increase in temperature caused by hardscapes and buildings in urbanized areas. And parking minimums actually lead to more driving, and in turn more greenhouse gas emissions. Obviously, people with cars drive more than people without cars, and research has

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need a car to get around. The rural Idaho town of Sandpoint—the one that required a bank to build 118 parking spaces—also repealed parking minimums for its downtown. That repeal allowed a local taqueria to add new seating, while a growing tech startup remained in town, both impossible before, because

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debates around middle housing likely distracted the NIMBYs from focusing on the parking changes—thus smoothing the way to their passage. But the politics of parking minimums are rapidly shifting, with broader coalitions supporting repeals. A couple more examples from the West Coast can round out the discussion—if only to illuminate

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its minimums, Sacramento—an arguably more car-centric city a hundred miles away—was experimenting with a broad range of smaller-scale reforms. Sacramento slashed parking minimums by half for affordable and senior housing, eliminated them for locations within a quarter mile of an existing or proposed light rail station, and reduced

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buildings converted to residential use. Finally, the zoning code divided the city up into four parking districts, including a central business district that had no parking minimums and a maximum of one space per 400 square feet for commercial uses, as well as bike parking requirements. The other three districts reduced parking

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arts of governance, is a matter of carrots and sticks, deploying regulations to encourage some kinds of development and to discourage others. Once cities erase parking minimums and their attendant terrible consequences, and zone for active transportation, they can round out their reforms by enabling dense development around transit lines and stations

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barriers and building the right incentives. The density bonus program in San Diego produced just 145 units (15 affordable) in 2016, before the elimination of parking minimums. But in 2020, the year after parking mandates were lifted, the program produced 3,283 homes (over 1,500 affordable), many in the transit areas

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way that sensitive zoning can help build a neighborhood, in the fullest sense of the word. Zoning’s many tools—use tables, minimum lot sizes, parking minimums, tree-canopy coverages, accessory buildings, transferable development rights, dispersion radii, turf mandates, inclusionary mandates, transit-oriented zones, street designs, height caps, stepbacks, setbacks, and signage

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: Development Response to the Removal of Minimum Parking Requirements in Buffalo (NY),” Journal of the American Planning Association 87, no. 3 (2021). 102   also repealed parking minimums: Sandpoint, ID, City Code § 9-5-1(F-H) (hereinafter “Sandpoint Code”). 102   allowed a local taqueria: Qualls, “One Line of Your Zoning Code.” 102

Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It

by M. Nolan Gray  · 20 Jun 2022  · 252pp  · 66,183 words

7, 2015, https://www.fayettevilleflyer.com/2015/10/07/fayetteville-eliminates-minimum-parking-requirements/; Angie Schmitt, “Hartford Eliminates Parking Minimums Citywide,” Streetsblog, December 13, 2017, https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/12/13/hartford-eliminates-parking-minimums-citywide/. 3. Certain experienced planners may prefer to skip this section as needlessly restating what they already know

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

by Jeff Speck  · 13 Nov 2012  · 342pp  · 86,256 words

service on the garage. It was just the kick in the pants the city needed to finally rewrite its fifty-year-old regulations to eliminate parking minimums for new shops, offices, and apartments near Metro stations.22 They have decided to leave commercial parking provision to the free market, as Donald Shoup

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money is increasingly difficult to come by. This parking-induced commercial stasis is only half the story. The other half is the great burden that parking minimums place on affordability, especially for housing, and most especially in those communities that most need it. Developers in San Francisco estimate that the city’s

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city up too badly, let’s turn our accusing gaze back to the Green Metropolis itself, where the New York City Housing Authority still maintains parking minimums for its publicly assisted housing stock. These minimums have caused the city to abandon plans to add much-needed street-edge buildings to several of

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Brownsville, Brooklyn, hangs in the balance. It would replace surface parking lots with housing, shops, schools, and gardens, but it is being held up by parking minimums—despite being directly adjacent to two stops of the 2, 3, 4, and 5 subway lines straight to Manhattan. The chairman of the housing authority

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efficient. A space that serves an office during the day can serve a restaurant in the evening and a resident overnight. So, by simultaneously setting parking minimums and outlawing private parking lots, cities are able to indirectly reduce the amount of parking that has to be provided. Eventually, as real life determines

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their apartments, stores, and offices, so the outcome is more Düsseldorf than Dallas. That outcome would be unimaginable with a parking requirement in place. Eliminating parking minimums simply allows developers to give their customers what they want. But, as we will discuss ahead, it is only politically viable when combined with a

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, Suburban Nation, 163n. 26. Shoup, 131. 27. Ibid., 157. 28. Langdon; Shoup, 146. 29. Langdon. 30. Shoup, 150. 31. Ibid. 32. Noah Kazis, “NYCHA Chairman: Parking Minimums ‘Working Against Us.’” 33. Wikipedia, “Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.” 34. Shoup, 102–103, 230, 239. 35. Ibid., 239. 36. Ibid., 262. 37. Ibid., 498

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Shows.” streetsblog.org, April 20, 2012. _____. “New PPW Results: More New Yorkers Use It, Without Clogging the Street.” streetsblog.org, December 8, 2010. _____. “NYCHA Chairman: Parking Minimums ‘Working Against Us.’” streetsblog.org, October 17, 2011. Keates, Nancy. “A Walker’s Guide to Home Buying.” The Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2010. Keen

Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It

by Daniel Knowles  · 27 Mar 2023  · 278pp  · 91,332 words

of land you own. But in practice there are actually lots of restrictions. Some, like safety standards, are obviously reasonable. But then there are mandatory parking minimums. If you are planning to open a bar—not a business one would hope people would drive to—you are required to provide ten parking

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in the city are now required to have two parking spaces, not one. It is not just apartments. Office buildings come with parking minimums, as do retail stores. There are parking minimums for almost anything, in fact. It is not the free market that results in American buildings being surrounded by oceans of tarmac

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cannabis retail. Service stations must have a space (not including the one by the pump) for every single gasoline pump. Even ATM machines come with parking minimums: one space for every machine. Perhaps most insanely of all, points out Matthew Lewis, a Californian pro-housing activist, even bars have mandatory parking. “One

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businesses so that cars do not clog up the streets, where parking is also often free. In the United States, these laws, known as “mandatory parking minimums,” date back to 1923, when Columbus, Ohio, implemented the first one. They have proliferated ever since. To decide how many parking spaces to supply, planners

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big city, people have other ways of getting around. The more parking you provide, the more people will choose to drive everywhere. The result of parking minimums is a stupendous oversupply of parking spaces, to the detriment of literally everything else. I have often met people in America—and elsewhere—who worry

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or Washington, D.C., is the result of deliberate public policy. I told some friends of mine who lived in Los Angeles for years about parking minimums, and they had no idea. Most Americans I know seem to just take it for granted that businesses provide ample free parking—they think it

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people than air pollution and congestion. Across America, more and more cities are beginning to replace parking minimum rules with parking maximum rules—something most British cities did in the early 2000s. Even California has removed parking minimums near public transit stops. But the trouble, in much of the world, is what Shoup and

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transit stop (typically, in LA, a light rail station). This being Los Angeles, it is fairly modest. One of the rules is that the mandatory parking minimums applied are restricted to a maximum of 0.5 car parking spaces per bedroom, and total parking is not meant to exceed more than one

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and cycling. Unfortunately, California’s program, passed in 1992, is rather limited. Companies that own their own parking lots or garages (which, thanks to those parking minimums, many do) do not have to comply with it, for the reasonable enough reason that they are not saving money by paying for less parking

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rhetoric is at least partially being backed by action. Cities across America, even including ones like Houston and Los Angeles, are beginning to roll back parking minimums, and to reduce the amount of suburban “single family” homes being built in favor of denser, more city-focused development near transport. Minneapolis has built

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thousands of new apartments since it eliminated parking minimums in 2018. In Europe, biking has taken off in a spectacular fashion, and not just in Paris. Even my hometown, Birmingham, one of the most

Straphanger

by Taras Grescoe  · 8 Sep 2011  · 428pp  · 134,832 words

it, “is a fertility drug for cars.” He and his followers, the self-styled “Shoupistas,” believe that many urban congestion problems stem from civically mandated parking minimums. An enterprising mayor who wanted to permanently revolutionize the city’s form, and force a huge spike in transit ridership, would have to enact one

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to discourage drivers—a simple way to start would be to heed the “Shoupistas,” the followers of University of California professor Donald Shoup, and turn parking minimums into maximums in new developments—while dangling the carrot of safe, comfortable, and frequent transit to draw new riders. For cities, it will involve building

Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress--And How to Bring It Back

by Marc J Dunkelman  · 17 Feb 2025  · 454pp  · 134,799 words

and demand melted away.73 What’s more, to exacerbate the hurdles community members could exploit to thwart change, reformers leaned into restrictions that imposed parking minimums, density limits, and other criteria.74 But the most powerful tool reformers devised in the campaign to push power down to ordinary citizens centered on

Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy (Bicycle)

by Elly Blue  · 29 Nov 2014  · 221pp  · 68,880 words

indirectly. Litman, T., “Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis II – Parking Costs,” VTPI. 2012 97 Mieszkowski, K., “We Paved Paradise,” Salon. October 1, 2007 In England parking minimums been removed entirely, thanks to bipartisan efforts—conservatives like deregulation, and liberals like the multitude of public benefits. Portland, Oregon removed

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parking minimums in the 1980s in areas with frequent transit service, with good success (it has very recently reinstituted them after neighbors of a planned new development

Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars

by Samuel I. Schwartz  · 17 Aug 2015  · 340pp  · 92,904 words

foot of new construction, whether residential or commercial, some minimum amount of parking would likewise be required. In 1989, though, the city changed from a parking minimum to a parking maximum. And the maximums weren’t very maximal. For every 1,333 square feet authorized by a Zurich construction permit, developers were