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Strong Towns has called a good amount of attention to the mandatory parking requirements in many cities (and shockingly, many downtowns). Thankfully, it seems a

Strong Towns has called a good amount of attention to the mandatory parking requirements in many cities (and shockingly, many downtowns). Thankfully, it seems a fair number of cities are removing such restrictions, but hopefully it becomes more widespread. In general I hope the US can urbanize, the older I get the more I realize it’s not really enjoyable living in this country. I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience. (To be clear, I doubt most of the US will urbanize given the rural nature of a lot of it, but I hope at least bigger cities can move in that direction)

7thaccount 3y ago
Fayetteville Arkansas was one of the first towns to remove the mandatory parking restrictions and a ton of abandoned downtown buildings quickly became restaurants. They were absolutely right.
- 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
  My jaw hit the floor when I learned that some cities actually apply parking minimums to redevelopment of downtown properties and not just stuff like new surburban strip malls, to the point that some projects have bought adjacent buildings and demolished them in favor of parking lots. Maybe it's true that the r/fuckcars crowd likes to throw the term "carbrain" around a little too freely, but this kind of ass-backward policy makes me think we really do suffer from a self-destructive mind virus.
  - bsder 3y ago
    It's not always ass-backward. People forget that one of the reasons why the malls became so popular and helped collapse the old downtowns was, you guessed it, lack of free parking. With malls, you could come into a boundary and spend a significant amount of time in a walkable arena with lots of different stores. You knew there would always be parking except possibly at Christmas. Downtown? Not so much. And you probably had to pay for parking. And carry quarters for the meter. And risk getting parking tickets. etc. Malls were what all the anti-car people supposedly promise will happen when you remove cars. And yet, I know of no malls that ever gained residence areas within walking distance. Which seemingly, would have prevented the malls from collapsing. The anti-car brigade has yet to demonstrate why that should be different today.
    - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
      But, in turn, "within walking distance" is exactly what is rendered impossible by a system in which every significant center of economic activity is required to have square miles of parking around it. It's sort of like a social form of obesity; it's clearly not quite as poisonous as the most vocal detractors say, but the sheer bulk does make it harder to move in what we might consider an optimal way. Also, for what it's worth, you're citing "carry quarters" as some kind of dystopic microaggression to an elder millennial who was absolutely fucking thrilled to share a roll of quarters with his dad when we went to the local game store and crushed Sengoku on the nearest Neo Geo cabinet.
      - bsder 3y ago
        > Also, for what it's worth, you're citing "carry quarters" as some kind of dystopic microaggression Uh, yeah, it actually WAS. Quarters were a non-trivial amount of currency (a little under a gallon of gas) back when downtowns still existed and parking meters took them. There is a reason why "meter maids" were hated so much.
        neilkk 3y ago
        The youngest person who was able to drive when gas was a quarter dollar a gallon is now in their early nineties.
        tekknik 3y ago
        Absolutely not, I’m at least 1/2 that age and remember has being $0.35/gal around when I started driving.
        neilkk 3y ago
        There are 100 cents in a dollar fyi.
    - cableshaft 3y ago
      > Malls were what all the anti-car people supposedly promise will happen when you remove cars. And yet, I know of no malls that ever gained residence areas within walking distance. One of the malls near me, about 5 years ago they tore up a good chunk (like a third) of its massive parking lot and turned it into an apartment complex. It now butts up almost directly against the mall. So at least there's one.
travoc 3y ago
Parking minimums are required by cities because underparked development projects dump their parking problems on the surrounding neighborhoods. These types of externalities shouldn't just be hand-waved away in the name of "urbanization." The lack of parking creates real problems for residents, police and businesses in growing cities every day.
- xnx 3y ago
  The market is better at solving this problem than central planning.
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    Not when it comes to ADA requirements...
    - davidw 3y ago
      Having a few ADA parking spots is fine and a drop in the bucket compared to the wasted space from all that mandated parking. Also, people with disabilities tend to drive less than those without them.
    - yardie 3y ago
      Oddly enough, the ADA laws were written in a way to use the free market. The government can't force you to be ADA compliant. Instead, it relies on lawyers and their disabled clients to sue you into compliance. An entire cottage industry of law firms who specialize in ADA compliance have sprung up since the law's inception.
    - epistasis 3y ago
      ADA requirements are outside of the planning sphere though. In fact, that ADA requirements came from laws from the federal government rather than from urban planning is pretty good evidence that the market (ie democratic legislation) is better at this than centralized planners of urban areas.
- _dain_ 3y ago
J_Shelby_J 3y ago
It should decrease housing costs as well. The rules in my area are two spots per bedroom - mandatory. But my building is in uptown Dallas and the main draw to the area is that people work in the area and walk to work. So many people don't own cars or are only a one home house hold. And because it's a highrise parking spots are expensive. Like $50k+ each. And that goes directly to the price of housing in rents. Meanwhile, even at the busiest our garage is more than half empty. What a waste. D magazine even used a picture of my garage in their article: https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/12/the-city-of-dallas-is-putting-parking-spots-in-its-crosshairs/ https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/12/the-city-of-da...
- Swizec 3y ago
  > The rules in my area are two spots per bedroom - mandatory Wait am I reading this right that a 3-bedroom family home would come with space for six cars? How many families have 6 cars that's insane O.O Sounds like a regulation someone long ago thought would for sure prevent anyone from building anything. No way they actually wanted that much residential parking ...
  - jrockway 3y ago
    I don't think there's a good one-size-fits-all rule. A 3 bedroom unit could be 3 couples living together and splitting the rent, or it could be 1 family, or it could just be 1 person who wants an office and a gym. The rule should probably be "1 space for car owned", like when you go to buy a car, you have to prove that you have a place to park it.
    - apendleton 3y ago
      Just restrict who can park on the street. Then if people want to park a car, they'll need a residence with a space, and if there's demand for residences with parking spaces, developers will build them, minimums or not. The issue with minimums is that they require building spaces above and beyond demand, but markets should do just fine at making sure demand is met, as long as there are barriers to externalizing it.
stronglikedan 3y ago
The US is urbanized...if you want it. There are plenty of places where people that enjoy living in urban areas can do so. However, to me, that sounds like an unenjoyable hellscape. Been there, done that. The beauty of the US is that people have choices, and aren't pigeonholed into someone else's idea of "enjoyable".
- erikaww 3y ago
  I think you got it backwards. Cities now only build these subury sfh highway parking lot hellscapes and ban anything remotely dense So everyone is pigeonholed into something you want
  - tekknik 3y ago
    density can be hugely detrimental to climate change if the city isn’t built in a green way, which no US city currently is and will likely not be in your lifetime. under the guise that your desire to live in a highly dense climate wasteland, by 2035 we should require either everybody move away from city centers, or require cities be zero emission. your decisions are affecting me, isn’t that the norm now?
    - earthling8118 3y ago
      If we can't make the more efficient cities sustainable, why in the world would it be possible to do the same thing with everyone spread out?
- marssaxman 3y ago
  There really are not plenty of places in the US where you can live a good, urban, non-car-oriented life, and you can tell that is true because the ones which do exist tend to be very expensive, showing that they are in high demand. You clearly do not desire an urban lifestyle, and I won't try to change your mind about that, but those of us who do want urban living generally don't find that our choices are either plentiful or affordable.
  - 3y ago
UtopiaPunk 3y ago
I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas. I was sitting in a coffee shop in a small town and I overheard a conversation next to me. Two elderly men were talking, and one of them made a comment to the effect of, "I like a rural town, so I try to vote to keep it that way." Two or three decades ago, this town really was a small farming town, but the population is growing and the town is changing. It's not becoming a city, though, not by any means! As the city (somewhat) nearby is becoming more expensive, the suburban sprawl is, well sprawling. The small rural town is transforming into a suburb of the city. I would agree that this is a negative change for the small town, and I would argue that the solution is to urbanize the nearby city. There should be much more housing, and it should be much more affordable to live in the city. As it stands, many people want to live in that city, but find the housing prices unaffordable. So these people make a compromise between how much they are willing to pay on housing vs how long they are willing to travel (almost always by car) into the city. I count myself in this group. Urban areas and rural areas complement one another, and there's pros and cons to living in either kind of place. However, post-WWII styled suburbs are, in my opinion, a net negative.
- CuriousCosmic 3y ago
  > I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas. It really is. Some subruban and rual places are starting to get this as well. A common theme among the ones that get it is to provide density bonuses (i.e. if you allocate large blocks of conservation space, you can build more densely). The result is that you get the same overall density in an area but the people are living much closer together and not sprawling out and building over the natural environment. I personally think most of them are too conservative with their approaches (often setting upper limits on density even with the bonuses) but the general approach of "build dense to limit the impact on rural spaces" is progress.
  - UtopiaPunk 3y ago
    There are some silly culture-war politics which makes reasonable discussions difficult. But also some of the politics problem is that a lot of these decisions are being made at the local town/city level. Small rural towns may try to dig in their heels and and resist urbanization (and the specific tactics involved are usually kind of bad, imo). Meanwhile, big cities often don't have strong incentives to not sprawl, at least in the US. Sprawl moves the costs of housing and transporation onto someone else (either the surrounding towns or the individuals), while the city maintains some portion of a tax base (sales tax and local businesses). Some cities have some political will to fight for these anyway, but even at the best of times, these policies have to make some harmful compromises. I think the most promising solutions to this problem are policies from state-level governments.
coldpie 3y ago
> having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. We're at a critical juncture here in the Twin Cities. The state DOT needs to re-build the interstate that cuts right through the entire metro area (I-94) for the first time since it was first built 50 years ago. There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. This would be amazing, the area around I-94 is, as you'd expect, quite unpleasant to be in. It's noisy, dirty, and dangerous. The interstate is infamous for being one of those roads that was planned to run through and destroy working class and Black neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s[1], and removing it would go some way to regaining what had been room for people to live. I think it's a bit of a longshot, but dang, I would love to see the cities recover that space for the people who actually live here, not just those who are driving through it. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I'm really hoping we don't blow it by just rebuilding the stupid thing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_94_in_Minnesota#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_94_in_Minnesota#His...
- hobs 3y ago
  I live in the twin cities and I had no idea that was even on anyone's mind, I love the idea.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    Please, please (please) contact everyone you can think of to support the idea. MnDOT has contact info on the Rethinking I-94 page[1], tell your city council rep, your county commissioner, your mayor, your state legislators, the governor. Tell your friends and neighbors. It's so easy to just fall back and do the same thing we've always done; making a change is really hard and we need to show that there is support for it. [1] https://talk.dot.state.mn.us/rethinking-i94 https://talk.dot.state.mn.us/rethinking-i94 The official term for the proposal to remove the freeway is "at-grade alternatives".
    - hobs 3y ago
      I will do this thing you say.
fasthands9 3y ago
The problem I have with the thinking in this article most of the parking lots are privately owned so saying 'tear them up and plant trees' is not something that can be implemented by the government. If mandatory parking requirements did go down, and zoning was increased, then the people who own it would willingly put forth the effort to make the space more useful. It would also help sort out what is considered "unused" - which right now is a nebulous concept.
- juujian 3y ago
  It's easy, just charge all property owners for sales surface area. It messes with lots of things, water table, flooding, generates heat. All things that create cost for a community. That's how Berlin decided to tackle the issue.
  - fasthands9 3y ago
    I also assume Berlin does not have high parking requirements. For instance, this ordinance in NC says you need one parking space for every 300 sq feet of a store. So the average 30,000 sq foot grocery store would need 100 spots, at least. Without getting rid of requirements like these the stores will not be able to remove spaces if they wanted. I very much like land value tax (which sounds similar in effect to what you are proposing) but you need the zoning flexibility first. https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/swansboro/latest/swansboro_nc/0-0-0-19244 https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/swansboro/latest/swans...
tomcar288 3y ago
you don't necessarily need to urbanize. just make things more walkable. Instead of having 1 large library or grocery store the size of a theme park, have 10 smaller ones in walking distance instead.
- bluGill 3y ago
  I prefer the metric is an 8 year old should be able to get to the library alone. I don't are if they take the bus, walk, or ride a bike - but they need to be able to get there alone. This is a proxy for safety of various transport modes, available routes, and community attitude toward kids being out alone.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  That's what functional urbanization looks like! From where I live in central Seattle, there are four grocery stores within ten minutes' walk. They all have parking lots, but I rarely use them; instead of buying a lot of groceries at once, it's easier to pop on by every day or two and just carry a bag home. There are no skyscrapers here, it's all townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings, but that's all we need - if we could fill the city limits with neighborhoods like this, there'd be no need for any more sprawl.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  Without sufficient density, these things don't make money (or the municipality doesn't have the tax revenue to keep them open). You can't "just" make things more walkable. You also need enough people to raise money to maintain sidewalks, buy stuff at stores, work in the area, etc.
trimethylpurine 3y ago
I've long suspected that this model is meant for cities to make money on DUIs. They close the public transit before the bars in almost every city across the country, and they ensure the bars are far enough away and restrictive enough that you have to drive. Then they tax the hell out of taxi services to ensure that there aren't enough cabs to take you home and rides can exceed $100 (which is a lot in most of the country by area, not population). It's zoned this way where bars and restaurants aren't near houses, in summary. If they did it like Spain, for example, where you can just walk out of your home, sit on the street at any restaurant, and drink wine with your friends, we'd have exactly what you're describing. But then they wouldn't be able to rake in DUI profits.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  A city does not want drunk people crashing cars into infrastructure or murdering its inhabitants. They don't want to support injured people who are unable to work. They don't want these types of cases taking up the court's time. All this stuff costs a city money & they aren't inviting people to do it just in case they get caught (because the type of person who can't afford a cab home probably also can't afford to replace a downed traffic light). Save the conspiracies for red light cameras or speed traps.
  - trimethylpurine 3y ago
    The above makes me think we're overestimating how much damage to infrastructure and human life is really being caused. As much as I wish you were right, the solutions are nearly free and they are right in front of our faces and being actively selected against by municipalities across the country. I'd love to hear the explanation for that.
dfxm12 3y ago
I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience. What does hyper dense mean? And how is that detrimental? Tokyo meets all of your requirements, for example, but you would call that hyper dense for sure, right? The article is "about" Baltimore, MD. Does that city meet your threshold of hyper dense? As with most things, a lot of this comes down to money. The more dense an area, the more use the things you want are used, and the more money they make, they more likely they are to thrive. The more dense an area, the bigger the tax base, the more money there is for nice things that maybe don't make money on their own.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  maybe they talk about russian style hyper dense blocks but with 0 infra that looks like hell...
kelnos 3y ago
I'm so torn as to what I want my future living situation to be. I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Maryland, spent a little time in my 20s in the denser-than-suburbs suburbia of the Bay Area, and then the past 14 years in San Francisco proper. More recently I've been spending 1-1.5 months at a time living out in "rural" parts of Truckee, CA. I just don't know anymore. In San Francisco I live within a few minutes' walk of two dozen or so useful businesses (corner store, grocery, bakery, butcher, restaurants, bars, etc.), and everything I need to live I can get by walking no more than a half hour. I hate driving and love this. In Truckee, the closest convenience store is a 40-minute walk, and all the other necessities are at least a 10-minute drive. On the other hand, I'm a light sleeper, and the intense darkness (moonlight, at most, only!) and quiet in Truckee was wonderful for restfulness. In SF we live near a Muni bus depot, where they clean buses well past midnight every night. I can mostly -- but not entirely -- get darkness with blackout blinds, but it's really not the same. I definitely don't want to go back to the suburbs, but that sort of thing -- with much better city planning than most (all?) US suburbs have -- has potential to give me quiet and darkness, but the ability to walk everywhere I need to go. Ultimately, though, what drives where I want to live is where my friends are. As I get older, I find it harder and harder to make new, close friends. Moving to a new place where I don't know anyone sounds like torture to me.
- sgu999 3y ago
  This is what bothers me the most with the car-centric mindset so many people have. You have to choose in-between being car free in a very dense area or car dependent in a rural area. In reality small towns can be just compact enough to allow many small businesses to thrive, as it's the case in other developed countries. Malls are the main source of problems...
  - tekknik 3y ago
    Small towns don’t typically have malls. Small towns are more on the order of “oh we just got a walmart”. I think you’re conflating small towns with mid to large towns or small cities.
- bluGill 3y ago
Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
Have you considered moving to an urban area?
- Mawr 3y ago
  Have you considered paying the full cost of living in a non-urban area via taxes?
  - Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
    I haven't considered that. Do you have any data surrounding tax increase on urbanites caused by suburbanites? (If I understand your point.)
    - Tactician_mark 3y ago
      Here's an infographic from Sustainable Prosperity: https://i.imgur.com/2rgkaOZ.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/2rgkaOZ.jpeg That's just one area in Halifax, but the idea is that higher population densities require less infrastructure per person. Less road, power line, water/sewer pipe, etc. However, low density houses usually pay less in property taxes per unit area than high density, meaning that increased infrastructure cost is coupled with a considerable tax break.
NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
The problem is that the removal of parking requirements typically doesn't address the parking-lot scenario depicted here. It's often a developer handout that results in a degraded standard of living for existing residents in the neighborhood around a new development. Let's say a developer builds a bigger, taller building than what was there previously and adds residents. If they're not required to include sufficient parking, the new cars will flood the surrounding neighborhood, and existing residents will now have no place to park. This depends on the type of neighborhood, of course, but it happened in mine in Chicago. Not being able to just come home and go inside, but rather have to drive around and around in ever-larger circles (in the winter) to look for a parking spot because some alderman got paid off by a developer to screw his constituents... that's the reality. We're seeing this in L.A. too, where local politicians will sell out to developers and publicly excuse it by pretending that parking creates cars and cars = bad. L.A. is a giant county masquerading as a city, and it's never going to be Amsterdam (you hear this asinine comparison all the time). Pretending that people aren't going to bring cars to their residence is absurd and damaging. But big vacant parking lots growing weeds? Hell yeah, we have those all over the place, around dying malls and boarded-up Macy's. But what did CA politicians do? Pass laws that allow developers to destroy one single-family home and build 10 units there, overriding any local zoning or review and without local ability to prevent it. So now we're going to pave over even MORE ground and cut down MORE trees, while said malls are still sitting there. As if the place isn't hot, barren, drought-stricken, and depressing enough. Anyway, that's what I think of when I hear "get rid of parking requirements:" corrupt sellouts.
- bluGill 3y ago
  A few developers will do that. However people who need to drive will soon catch on that parking is hard in those buildings and so they will go elsewhere. This is a self correcting problem if you let it run its course.
  - NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
    [dead]
baby 3y ago
The grid life in the US with large roads and few commercial streets really suck imo. I dream of going back to Europe but can’t unfortunately…
al_borland 3y ago
Parking lot requirements make sense in areas where cars are the only viable means of transportation. Removing those requirements only makes sense when other forms of transportation are provided to reduce the number of cars required to get people to the places of business. Near me, the city is talking about removing a big parking lot and strip mall and turning it into a mixed use space, but as far as I’ve read there has been no talk of transportation. The area sits at the intersection of two stroads. It’s technically walkable, but it’s not a pleasant walk. It’s technically can be biked, but not without competing with cars for space on the road. There might be buses, but they are very infrequent and slow. Everyone I know would want to drive, as the alternatives are significantly worse than driving. If people can’t park, they simply won’t go. I’d love to get rid of my car, but that requires the city, and region, make significant investments in public transit infrastructure. The non-car option can’t just be available for those who are willing to put in a lot of effort to avoid using a car. The non-car options need to be better than the car option. Easier, cheaper, safer, and more pleasant. Removing parking lots makes driving worse, but doesn’t make the alternatives better.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  requirements don't make sense, numbers are pulled from thin air in the regulations so even in this case requirements should be elliminated
- earthling8118 3y ago
  The parking lot requirements are a large part of what makes cars the only viable transport option in an area. They do need to go. And yes, other means of transport need to be provided.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

7thaccount 3y ago

Fayetteville Arkansas was one of the first towns to remove the mandatory parking restrictions and a ton of abandoned downtown buildings quickly became restaurants. They were absolutely right.

0xcde4c3db 3y ago
My jaw hit the floor when I learned that some cities actually apply parking minimums to redevelopment of downtown properties and not just stuff like new surburban strip malls, to the point that some projects have bought adjacent buildings and demolished them in favor of parking lots. Maybe it's true that the r/fuckcars crowd likes to throw the term "carbrain" around a little too freely, but this kind of ass-backward policy makes me think we really do suffer from a self-destructive mind virus.
- bsder 3y ago
  It's not always ass-backward. People forget that one of the reasons why the malls became so popular and helped collapse the old downtowns was, you guessed it, lack of free parking. With malls, you could come into a boundary and spend a significant amount of time in a walkable arena with lots of different stores. You knew there would always be parking except possibly at Christmas. Downtown? Not so much. And you probably had to pay for parking. And carry quarters for the meter. And risk getting parking tickets. etc. Malls were what all the anti-car people supposedly promise will happen when you remove cars. And yet, I know of no malls that ever gained residence areas within walking distance. Which seemingly, would have prevented the malls from collapsing. The anti-car brigade has yet to demonstrate why that should be different today.
  - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
    But, in turn, "within walking distance" is exactly what is rendered impossible by a system in which every significant center of economic activity is required to have square miles of parking around it. It's sort of like a social form of obesity; it's clearly not quite as poisonous as the most vocal detractors say, but the sheer bulk does make it harder to move in what we might consider an optimal way. Also, for what it's worth, you're citing "carry quarters" as some kind of dystopic microaggression to an elder millennial who was absolutely fucking thrilled to share a roll of quarters with his dad when we went to the local game store and crushed Sengoku on the nearest Neo Geo cabinet.
    - bsder 3y ago
      > Also, for what it's worth, you're citing "carry quarters" as some kind of dystopic microaggression Uh, yeah, it actually WAS. Quarters were a non-trivial amount of currency (a little under a gallon of gas) back when downtowns still existed and parking meters took them. There is a reason why "meter maids" were hated so much.
      - neilkk 3y ago
        The youngest person who was able to drive when gas was a quarter dollar a gallon is now in their early nineties.
        tekknik 3y ago
        Absolutely not, I’m at least 1/2 that age and remember has being $0.35/gal around when I started driving.
        neilkk 3y ago
        There are 100 cents in a dollar fyi.
  - cableshaft 3y ago
    > Malls were what all the anti-car people supposedly promise will happen when you remove cars. And yet, I know of no malls that ever gained residence areas within walking distance. One of the malls near me, about 5 years ago they tore up a good chunk (like a third) of its massive parking lot and turned it into an apartment complex. It now butts up almost directly against the mall. So at least there's one.

travoc 3y ago

Parking minimums are required by cities because underparked development projects dump their parking problems on the surrounding neighborhoods. These types of externalities shouldn't just be hand-waved away in the name of "urbanization." The lack of parking creates real problems for residents, police and businesses in growing cities every day.

xnx 3y ago
The market is better at solving this problem than central planning.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Not when it comes to ADA requirements...
  - davidw 3y ago
    Having a few ADA parking spots is fine and a drop in the bucket compared to the wasted space from all that mandated parking. Also, people with disabilities tend to drive less than those without them.
  - yardie 3y ago
    Oddly enough, the ADA laws were written in a way to use the free market. The government can't force you to be ADA compliant. Instead, it relies on lawyers and their disabled clients to sue you into compliance. An entire cottage industry of law firms who specialize in ADA compliance have sprung up since the law's inception.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    ADA requirements are outside of the planning sphere though. In fact, that ADA requirements came from laws from the federal government rather than from urban planning is pretty good evidence that the market (ie democratic legislation) is better at this than centralized planners of urban areas.
_dain_ 3y ago

J_Shelby_J 3y ago

It should decrease housing costs as well. The rules in my area are two spots per bedroom - mandatory. But my building is in uptown Dallas and the main draw to the area is that people work in the area and walk to work. So many people don't own cars or are only a one home house hold. And because it's a highrise parking spots are expensive. Like $50k+ each. And that goes directly to the price of housing in rents. Meanwhile, even at the busiest our garage is more than half empty. What a waste. D magazine even used a picture of my garage in their article: https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/12/the-city-of-dallas-is-putting-parking-spots-in-its-crosshairs/ https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/12/the-city-of-da...

Swizec 3y ago
> The rules in my area are two spots per bedroom - mandatory Wait am I reading this right that a 3-bedroom family home would come with space for six cars? How many families have 6 cars that's insane O.O Sounds like a regulation someone long ago thought would for sure prevent anyone from building anything. No way they actually wanted that much residential parking ...
- jrockway 3y ago
  I don't think there's a good one-size-fits-all rule. A 3 bedroom unit could be 3 couples living together and splitting the rent, or it could be 1 family, or it could just be 1 person who wants an office and a gym. The rule should probably be "1 space for car owned", like when you go to buy a car, you have to prove that you have a place to park it.
  - apendleton 3y ago
    Just restrict who can park on the street. Then if people want to park a car, they'll need a residence with a space, and if there's demand for residences with parking spaces, developers will build them, minimums or not. The issue with minimums is that they require building spaces above and beyond demand, but markets should do just fine at making sure demand is met, as long as there are barriers to externalizing it.

stronglikedan 3y ago

The US is urbanized...if you want it. There are plenty of places where people that enjoy living in urban areas can do so. However, to me, that sounds like an unenjoyable hellscape. Been there, done that. The beauty of the US is that people have choices, and aren't pigeonholed into someone else's idea of "enjoyable".

erikaww 3y ago
I think you got it backwards. Cities now only build these subury sfh highway parking lot hellscapes and ban anything remotely dense So everyone is pigeonholed into something you want
- tekknik 3y ago
  density can be hugely detrimental to climate change if the city isn’t built in a green way, which no US city currently is and will likely not be in your lifetime. under the guise that your desire to live in a highly dense climate wasteland, by 2035 we should require either everybody move away from city centers, or require cities be zero emission. your decisions are affecting me, isn’t that the norm now?
  - earthling8118 3y ago
    If we can't make the more efficient cities sustainable, why in the world would it be possible to do the same thing with everyone spread out?
marssaxman 3y ago
There really are not plenty of places in the US where you can live a good, urban, non-car-oriented life, and you can tell that is true because the ones which do exist tend to be very expensive, showing that they are in high demand. You clearly do not desire an urban lifestyle, and I won't try to change your mind about that, but those of us who do want urban living generally don't find that our choices are either plentiful or affordable.
- 3y ago

UtopiaPunk 3y ago

I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas. I was sitting in a coffee shop in a small town and I overheard a conversation next to me. Two elderly men were talking, and one of them made a comment to the effect of, "I like a rural town, so I try to vote to keep it that way." Two or three decades ago, this town really was a small farming town, but the population is growing and the town is changing. It's not becoming a city, though, not by any means! As the city (somewhat) nearby is becoming more expensive, the suburban sprawl is, well sprawling. The small rural town is transforming into a suburb of the city. I would agree that this is a negative change for the small town, and I would argue that the solution is to urbanize the nearby city. There should be much more housing, and it should be much more affordable to live in the city. As it stands, many people want to live in that city, but find the housing prices unaffordable. So these people make a compromise between how much they are willing to pay on housing vs how long they are willing to travel (almost always by car) into the city. I count myself in this group. Urban areas and rural areas complement one another, and there's pros and cons to living in either kind of place. However, post-WWII styled suburbs are, in my opinion, a net negative.

CuriousCosmic 3y ago
> I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas. It really is. Some subruban and rual places are starting to get this as well. A common theme among the ones that get it is to provide density bonuses (i.e. if you allocate large blocks of conservation space, you can build more densely). The result is that you get the same overall density in an area but the people are living much closer together and not sprawling out and building over the natural environment. I personally think most of them are too conservative with their approaches (often setting upper limits on density even with the bonuses) but the general approach of "build dense to limit the impact on rural spaces" is progress.
- UtopiaPunk 3y ago
  There are some silly culture-war politics which makes reasonable discussions difficult. But also some of the politics problem is that a lot of these decisions are being made at the local town/city level. Small rural towns may try to dig in their heels and and resist urbanization (and the specific tactics involved are usually kind of bad, imo). Meanwhile, big cities often don't have strong incentives to not sprawl, at least in the US. Sprawl moves the costs of housing and transporation onto someone else (either the surrounding towns or the individuals), while the city maintains some portion of a tax base (sales tax and local businesses). Some cities have some political will to fight for these anyway, but even at the best of times, these policies have to make some harmful compromises. I think the most promising solutions to this problem are policies from state-level governments.

coldpie 3y ago

> having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. We're at a critical juncture here in the Twin Cities. The state DOT needs to re-build the interstate that cuts right through the entire metro area (I-94) for the first time since it was first built 50 years ago. There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. This would be amazing, the area around I-94 is, as you'd expect, quite unpleasant to be in. It's noisy, dirty, and dangerous. The interstate is infamous for being one of those roads that was planned to run through and destroy working class and Black neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s[1], and removing it would go some way to regaining what had been room for people to live. I think it's a bit of a longshot, but dang, I would love to see the cities recover that space for the people who actually live here, not just those who are driving through it. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I'm really hoping we don't blow it by just rebuilding the stupid thing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_94_in_Minnesota#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_94_in_Minnesota#His...

hobs 3y ago
I live in the twin cities and I had no idea that was even on anyone's mind, I love the idea.
- coldpie 3y ago
  Please, please (please) contact everyone you can think of to support the idea. MnDOT has contact info on the Rethinking I-94 page[1], tell your city council rep, your county commissioner, your mayor, your state legislators, the governor. Tell your friends and neighbors. It's so easy to just fall back and do the same thing we've always done; making a change is really hard and we need to show that there is support for it. [1] https://talk.dot.state.mn.us/rethinking-i94 https://talk.dot.state.mn.us/rethinking-i94 The official term for the proposal to remove the freeway is "at-grade alternatives".
  - hobs 3y ago
    I will do this thing you say.

fasthands9 3y ago

The problem I have with the thinking in this article most of the parking lots are privately owned so saying 'tear them up and plant trees' is not something that can be implemented by the government. If mandatory parking requirements did go down, and zoning was increased, then the people who own it would willingly put forth the effort to make the space more useful. It would also help sort out what is considered "unused" - which right now is a nebulous concept.

juujian 3y ago
It's easy, just charge all property owners for sales surface area. It messes with lots of things, water table, flooding, generates heat. All things that create cost for a community. That's how Berlin decided to tackle the issue.
- fasthands9 3y ago
  I also assume Berlin does not have high parking requirements. For instance, this ordinance in NC says you need one parking space for every 300 sq feet of a store. So the average 30,000 sq foot grocery store would need 100 spots, at least. Without getting rid of requirements like these the stores will not be able to remove spaces if they wanted. I very much like land value tax (which sounds similar in effect to what you are proposing) but you need the zoning flexibility first. https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/swansboro/latest/swansboro_nc/0-0-0-19244 https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/swansboro/latest/swans...

tomcar288 3y ago

you don't necessarily need to urbanize. just make things more walkable. Instead of having 1 large library or grocery store the size of a theme park, have 10 smaller ones in walking distance instead.

bluGill 3y ago
I prefer the metric is an 8 year old should be able to get to the library alone. I don't are if they take the bus, walk, or ride a bike - but they need to be able to get there alone. This is a proxy for safety of various transport modes, available routes, and community attitude toward kids being out alone.
marssaxman 3y ago
That's what functional urbanization looks like! From where I live in central Seattle, there are four grocery stores within ten minutes' walk. They all have parking lots, but I rarely use them; instead of buying a lot of groceries at once, it's easier to pop on by every day or two and just carry a bag home. There are no skyscrapers here, it's all townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings, but that's all we need - if we could fill the city limits with neighborhoods like this, there'd be no need for any more sprawl.
dfxm12 3y ago
Without sufficient density, these things don't make money (or the municipality doesn't have the tax revenue to keep them open). You can't "just" make things more walkable. You also need enough people to raise money to maintain sidewalks, buy stuff at stores, work in the area, etc.

trimethylpurine 3y ago

I've long suspected that this model is meant for cities to make money on DUIs. They close the public transit before the bars in almost every city across the country, and they ensure the bars are far enough away and restrictive enough that you have to drive. Then they tax the hell out of taxi services to ensure that there aren't enough cabs to take you home and rides can exceed $100 (which is a lot in most of the country by area, not population). It's zoned this way where bars and restaurants aren't near houses, in summary. If they did it like Spain, for example, where you can just walk out of your home, sit on the street at any restaurant, and drink wine with your friends, we'd have exactly what you're describing. But then they wouldn't be able to rake in DUI profits.

dfxm12 3y ago
A city does not want drunk people crashing cars into infrastructure or murdering its inhabitants. They don't want to support injured people who are unable to work. They don't want these types of cases taking up the court's time. All this stuff costs a city money & they aren't inviting people to do it just in case they get caught (because the type of person who can't afford a cab home probably also can't afford to replace a downed traffic light). Save the conspiracies for red light cameras or speed traps.
- trimethylpurine 3y ago
  The above makes me think we're overestimating how much damage to infrastructure and human life is really being caused. As much as I wish you were right, the solutions are nearly free and they are right in front of our faces and being actively selected against by municipalities across the country. I'd love to hear the explanation for that.

dfxm12 3y ago

I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience. What does hyper dense mean? And how is that detrimental? Tokyo meets all of your requirements, for example, but you would call that hyper dense for sure, right? The article is "about" Baltimore, MD. Does that city meet your threshold of hyper dense? As with most things, a lot of this comes down to money. The more dense an area, the more use the things you want are used, and the more money they make, they more likely they are to thrive. The more dense an area, the bigger the tax base, the more money there is for nice things that maybe don't make money on their own.

Moldoteck 3y ago
maybe they talk about russian style hyper dense blocks but with 0 infra that looks like hell...

kelnos 3y ago

I'm so torn as to what I want my future living situation to be. I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Maryland, spent a little time in my 20s in the denser-than-suburbs suburbia of the Bay Area, and then the past 14 years in San Francisco proper. More recently I've been spending 1-1.5 months at a time living out in "rural" parts of Truckee, CA. I just don't know anymore. In San Francisco I live within a few minutes' walk of two dozen or so useful businesses (corner store, grocery, bakery, butcher, restaurants, bars, etc.), and everything I need to live I can get by walking no more than a half hour. I hate driving and love this. In Truckee, the closest convenience store is a 40-minute walk, and all the other necessities are at least a 10-minute drive. On the other hand, I'm a light sleeper, and the intense darkness (moonlight, at most, only!) and quiet in Truckee was wonderful for restfulness. In SF we live near a Muni bus depot, where they clean buses well past midnight every night. I can mostly -- but not entirely -- get darkness with blackout blinds, but it's really not the same. I definitely don't want to go back to the suburbs, but that sort of thing -- with much better city planning than most (all?) US suburbs have -- has potential to give me quiet and darkness, but the ability to walk everywhere I need to go. Ultimately, though, what drives where I want to live is where my friends are. As I get older, I find it harder and harder to make new, close friends. Moving to a new place where I don't know anyone sounds like torture to me.

sgu999 3y ago
This is what bothers me the most with the car-centric mindset so many people have. You have to choose in-between being car free in a very dense area or car dependent in a rural area. In reality small towns can be just compact enough to allow many small businesses to thrive, as it's the case in other developed countries. Malls are the main source of problems...
- tekknik 3y ago
  Small towns don’t typically have malls. Small towns are more on the order of “oh we just got a walmart”. I think you’re conflating small towns with mid to large towns or small cities.
bluGill 3y ago

Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago

Have you considered moving to an urban area?

Mawr 3y ago
Have you considered paying the full cost of living in a non-urban area via taxes?
- Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
  I haven't considered that. Do you have any data surrounding tax increase on urbanites caused by suburbanites? (If I understand your point.)
  - Tactician_mark 3y ago
    Here's an infographic from Sustainable Prosperity: https://i.imgur.com/2rgkaOZ.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/2rgkaOZ.jpeg That's just one area in Halifax, but the idea is that higher population densities require less infrastructure per person. Less road, power line, water/sewer pipe, etc. However, low density houses usually pay less in property taxes per unit area than high density, meaning that increased infrastructure cost is coupled with a considerable tax break.

NoPedantsThanks 3y ago

The problem is that the removal of parking requirements typically doesn't address the parking-lot scenario depicted here. It's often a developer handout that results in a degraded standard of living for existing residents in the neighborhood around a new development. Let's say a developer builds a bigger, taller building than what was there previously and adds residents. If they're not required to include sufficient parking, the new cars will flood the surrounding neighborhood, and existing residents will now have no place to park. This depends on the type of neighborhood, of course, but it happened in mine in Chicago. Not being able to just come home and go inside, but rather have to drive around and around in ever-larger circles (in the winter) to look for a parking spot because some alderman got paid off by a developer to screw his constituents... that's the reality. We're seeing this in L.A. too, where local politicians will sell out to developers and publicly excuse it by pretending that parking creates cars and cars = bad. L.A. is a giant county masquerading as a city, and it's never going to be Amsterdam (you hear this asinine comparison all the time). Pretending that people aren't going to bring cars to their residence is absurd and damaging. But big vacant parking lots growing weeds? Hell yeah, we have those all over the place, around dying malls and boarded-up Macy's. But what did CA politicians do? Pass laws that allow developers to destroy one single-family home and build 10 units there, overriding any local zoning or review and without local ability to prevent it. So now we're going to pave over even MORE ground and cut down MORE trees, while said malls are still sitting there. As if the place isn't hot, barren, drought-stricken, and depressing enough. Anyway, that's what I think of when I hear "get rid of parking requirements:" corrupt sellouts.

bluGill 3y ago
A few developers will do that. However people who need to drive will soon catch on that parking is hard in those buildings and so they will go elsewhere. This is a self correcting problem if you let it run its course.
- NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
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baby 3y ago

The grid life in the US with large roads and few commercial streets really suck imo. I dream of going back to Europe but can’t unfortunately…

al_borland 3y ago

Parking lot requirements make sense in areas where cars are the only viable means of transportation. Removing those requirements only makes sense when other forms of transportation are provided to reduce the number of cars required to get people to the places of business. Near me, the city is talking about removing a big parking lot and strip mall and turning it into a mixed use space, but as far as I’ve read there has been no talk of transportation. The area sits at the intersection of two stroads. It’s technically walkable, but it’s not a pleasant walk. It’s technically can be biked, but not without competing with cars for space on the road. There might be buses, but they are very infrequent and slow. Everyone I know would want to drive, as the alternatives are significantly worse than driving. If people can’t park, they simply won’t go. I’d love to get rid of my car, but that requires the city, and region, make significant investments in public transit infrastructure. The non-car option can’t just be available for those who are willing to put in a lot of effort to avoid using a car. The non-car options need to be better than the car option. Easier, cheaper, safer, and more pleasant. Removing parking lots makes driving worse, but doesn’t make the alternatives better.

Moldoteck 3y ago
requirements don't make sense, numbers are pulled from thin air in the regulations so even in this case requirements should be elliminated
earthling8118 3y ago
The parking lot requirements are a large part of what makes cars the only viable transport option in an area. They do need to go. And yes, other means of transport need to be provided.

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