Dive Brief:
- “The more parking you provide, the more likely people will be to own a car,” said Henry Grabar, staff writer for Slate Magazine and author of “Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World,” speaking on a Tuesday webinar hosted by the Eno Center for Transportation.
- The demand for readily accessible parking raises the cost and reduces the availability of housing, resulting in increased pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic congestion and pedestrian fatalities, Grabar explained.
- “We have become so accustomed to seeing the streets as perpetually lined with car storage — as if that had always been the way that they were — it can be a little hard to even comprehend what happens when you begin to design streets in a different way,” Grabar said.
Dive Insight:
As cities look to reclaim valuable curb space for uses other than parking, battles are brewing over plans for bus lanes, bike lanes and public spaces.
However, car owners still often expect parking to be readily available. “They want parking to be free. They want it to be convenient, which is to say directly in front of their destination, and they want it to be immediately available at the moment they arrive,” Grabar said.
Many cities have minimum parking requirements that set the number of parking spots for residential and office buildings as well as shopping centers and other venues. Nearly seven parking spots exist for every car in the U.S., according to some estimates.
Grabar said that parking mandates impact the housing supply by reducing the land available to build on. “What you lose is what is now commonly referred to as missing middle housing, which is a big reason why the country finds itself short four million homes,” he said. Missing middle housing is defined as multi-unit dwellings compatible in size with single-family homes as part of a walkable neighborhood. With parking minimums, Grabar explained, “You have to include all this parking, especially in an infill environment where the amount of land is limited.”
In dense cities with congested parking, drivers may cruise for a time to find a parking space. A 2021 study by Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, citing statistics from the mid-2000s, showed that 68% of drivers were cruising for parking at locations in Los Angeles, 28% in Manhattan and 45% in Brooklyn.
But more than 1,400 cities have implemented parking reforms. San Jose, California, eliminated parking minimums last year, and Austin, Texas, plans to do so this year.
People will adapt, Grabar said. “You get rid of parking, people decide to make trips other ways, and then you emerge with an environment that’s more pedestrian-friendly, simply because there are so many more people walking and biking.”
