Learn how one city ended parking minimums for good—and how your city can do it too.
If there was one simple thing your city could do to dramatically increase opportunities for entrepreneurs to start businesses, for people to find affordable housing, for small-scale developers to fix up neglected buildings, and for your city’s budget to become more solvent… would you do it?
That thing is getting rid of parking minimums, and hundreds of cities across the continent are making major progress on it. Parking minimums often mean the difference between being able to construct a new home on a small lot, or move a new business into a vacant space. For example, if a law requires five off-street parking spots for every 1,000 square feet of restaurant space, but the small alley in back of your future restaurant only has room for three spaces, it doesn’t matter whether that restaurant is located in the most walkable downtown neighborhood with a bus stop outside and dozens of street parking spots feet from the door—you can’t open your restaurant.
Minimum parking requirements hinder the potential of strong towns by filling our cities with unproductive, empty parking spaces that don’t add value to our places. If we eliminate these laws, don’t worry, we’ll still have plenty of parking. But we’ll be free to decide how much it’s worth to us and weigh its value against the other things we could do with the same finite, precious land. We’ll no longer be forced to build more parking than we really need.
Strong Towns advocates in Edmonton, Canada have been working hard to get rid of parking minimums in their town for some time, and this summer, they reached a victory! In a few weeks, they’re leading a Strong Towns webcast to tell you all about how they did it and how you can get to that same victory in your city.
Join us Tuesday, November 17 at 12pm CT for a free webcast all about eliminating parking minimums.
Cover image via Unsplash.