Parking Minimums: From 101 to Taking Action
Image via Unsplash.
Over the years, we’ve published a lot of articles about parking. A lot. We’ve also published a lot of articles (I stopped counting at 62) about parking minimums—laws on the books in many towns and cities that mandate how many off-street parking spaces businesses and residences must provide. We’ve even published a free e-book about parking minimums.
There are two reasons we cover parking minimums so in depth:
1. This seemingly innocuous bit of city code is actually one of the biggest factors shaping how our cities are built.
In my town of Silverton, Oregon, for example, most retail businesses must provide one stall of off-street parking for every 400 square feet of retail space, plus one stall for every three employees. Our local gyms must provide one stall per workout station or piece of workout equipment. Restaurants and bars must provide eight stalls for every 1,000 square feet of floor space, and churches must provide one stall for every four seats in the sanctuary. (Our walkable downtown is, mercifully, spared from these requirements; many downtowns aren’t so fortunate.)
Now imagine parking requirements like these being replicated across nearly every type of business and residence, and then replicated in cities across the country. You start to see why there are between three and eight parking stalls (estimates vary) for every registered vehicle in the United States. Why surface parking lots alone cover an area greater than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. And why in some cities—including Los Angeles—parking occupies more land than housing.
2. Parking minimums are sapping our cities’ strength and resilience.
The direct costs—the costs of creating, maintaining, and eventually replacing all those parking stalls—are high. The opportunity costs are high, too. Think of all the land consumed by excess parking; now think of all the ways it could be put to better use: more housing, small businesses that will help grow the local economy, parks, flexible space for food trucks and outdoor dining to give restaurants a fighting chance during the pandemic. And there are less obvious costs as well, like how the pavement, which can’t absorb storm water, leads to flooding. How it must be kept clear of snow and ice in winter. How it decreases walkability while increasing the distance sewer pipes, power lines, and other infrastructure must travel to reach their destinations.
Once, I was on the phone with a Strong Towns member who told me how helpful it would be to have one-pagers on key Strong Towns topics. (I’m pretty sure he used parking as an example.) We have produced an enormous amount of content over the years. But it would be nice to have a short document to send to someone—a friend, local official, etc.—as the definitive place where they should start reading and learning about parking…or housing, pedestrian safety, the Growth Ponzi Scheme, etc.
Now, this article isn’t our one-pager about parking minimums. But since that phone call, I’ve been thinking about the learning journey many of us have been on as it relates to building stronger, more financially resilient cities. If I wanted to lay out a clear path—“start here, then read this, then this”—for someone on parking minimums, what directions would I give? What follows is my answer to that question. It is idiosyncratic, to be sure. Chuck Marohn, Daniel Herriges, Rachel Quednau, and other Strong Towns staffers might guide someone on a different path. Yet the goal would be the same: give someone a 101 level understanding of why parking minimums are a millstone around the necks of our cities...then take them deeper, all the way to the point where they’re ready to take action to end parking minimums in their own community.
Step 1. Start Here
Read: “The Many Costs of Too Much Parking”
Requiring excessive parking comes at a heavy cost to the vitality and financial resilience of our cities. Have you ever wanted a one-stop list of the many ways this is the case? We did, too. So we made one. This article looks at the direct costs, the opportunity costs for businesses and developers, and the opportunity costs for cities and citizens.
Excerpt:
Studies have measured the cumulative explicit cost of the parking we provide. A 2018 study by the Mortgage Bankers Association examined the total parking supply in five cities and produced some eye-popping estimates of its cost:
Parking in Des Moines has a total replacement cost (i.e. what it would cost to rebuild all of it from scratch today) of $77,165 per household, or 60 percent of the cost of the median-priced home in Des Moines.
Seattle has a population density of 13 people per acre, and a parking density of 29 parking stalls per acre. That's more than 2 parking spaces per resident (including even young children) citywide.
Jackson, WY has over 100,000 parking spaces, whose eventual replacement cost is a staggering $192,000 per household.
Image source: Urban3.
Step 2. Go Deeper
Read: “Mapping the Effects of Parking Minimums,” by Joshua McCarty.
Our friend Joshua McCarty, part of the geoanalytics firm Urban3, used 3D models to map the disastrous effect of parking on our cities. These maps illustrate the way parking lots are probably depleting your town’s tax base and altering the landscape in detrimental ways.
Excerpt:
Ultimately parking is the single most important design feature that dilutes the tax productivity of development. Municipalities, for whom property taxes are their lifeblood, should treat parking for what it is: dead weight. Sadly the typical outlook found in most codes in most cities is to encourage such waste.
Read: “Parking Dominates Our Cities. But Do We Really *See* It?” by Daniel Herriges.
We don’t pay a ton of attention to parking lots in our day-to-day lives—nobody makes postcards of scenic or historic ones—yet parking dominates and shapes the built environment around us more than any other factor. Here’s how to start seeing parking—and the damage it does when we build too much of it.
Excerpt:
The actual impact of parking on urban form is far greater than even the amount of land occupied by the parking itself. This is because the requirement to provide parking tends to dictate almost everything else about how we design places, right down to where a building is situated on its lot, how big it is, and where to put the main entrance. This is the real reason why I called it the dominant physical feature of our cities.
Image source: Urban3
Step 3: Case Study: What’s Gone Wrong
Kansas City, Missouri
Read: “Asphalt City: How Parking Ate an American Metropolis,” by Daniel Herriges.
Parking is so ubiquitous that it’s hard to see just how much we have of it. But the data shows us. The data also reveals what a waste of precious resources all that parking is. Kansas City, Missouri—a city once known as the “Paris of the Plains”—is a tragic case study in just how wasteful.
Excerpt:
More than twice as much land in Kansas City is devoted to asphalt as to buildings. For each resident there are 1,065 square feet of building and 2,347 square feet of streets and parking. In total, it all adds up to 18.8 square miles of buildings and 41.4 square miles of asphalt (the slight discrepancy in the ratio is because the citywide figure includes estimates of things such as private driveways). Kansas City isn't that unusual here: you'll find a similar ratio in almost any suburb and many other big cities. Once we remove yards and various buffers, we devote significantly more of our developed land to cars than to people who aren’t in cars. And we’re learning that it doesn’t work out financially.
But we don't see it until we really look at the data.
Image source: Aaron Qualls
Step 4. Case Studies: How to Make it Right Again
Sandpoint, Idaho
Read: “One Line of Your Zoning Code Can Make a World of Difference,” by Aaron Qualls.
Sandpoint, Idaho, eliminated its downtown parking minimums 10 years ago. Since then, at least four projects that could not otherwise have happened have brought new vibrancy and economic productivity to downtown. Written by the city’s Director of Planning & Community Development.
Read: “Why Parking Minimums Almost Destroyed My Hometown and How We Repealed Them,” by John Reuter.
John Reuter—Strong Towns board member and former councilperson at the City of Sandpoint—tells the story of how Sandpoint abolished parking minimums and gives five tips for repealing them in your community, too.
Edmonton, Alberta
Read: “Will Edmonton Be the First Major Canadian City to Eliminate Parking Minimums?” by Ashley Salvador.
Published in May of this year, Ashley Salvador looked ahead to Edmonton’s upcoming vote to eliminate parking minimums. She describes the high cost of parking to the city, as well as the road to change in a city known as the Oil Capital of Canada.
Read: “Parking minimums are costing your city. For a way forward, look to Edmonton.” by John Pattison.
Spoiler alert: Edmonton did abolish minimum parking requirements this summer, making it the first major Canadian city to do so. I talked in depth with Ashley Salvador about how Edmonton got to the point it was ready to make the change, and what’s happened since the law change? (Was it parking chaos?) I also shared seven lessons I thought parking advocates everywhere could take away from the experience of advocates in Edmonton.
Step 5. Take Action
In this episode of the It’s the Little Things podcast, John Reuter shares further insights from Sandpoint on how you can propose eliminating parking minimums in your town—including how to tell a compelling story, how to find data that enhances that story, and how to build community support around removing parking minimums.
Watch: “Ending Parking Minimums: How to Make the Case with Facts and Options” (Webcast).
A webcast with advocates from Edmonton, featuring practical tips on how to end parking minimums in your own community. They talk about gathering data on how much parking is costing your city, how to make your case with facts, reassuring the public that getting rid of parking minimums doesn’t mean getting rid of parking, and the importance of empathy and patience.
Read: ”How to Talk to a Skeptic About Reducing Parking Requirements.”
If you have an objection on the tip of your tongue when it comes to parking, or one you’ve heard in your own community and want a good response, let’s see if we can answer it for you. Here are some of the most common questions and reactions we see about removing parking or repealing parking minimums.
Read: ”A Guide to Busting Parking Myths in Your Town,” by Daniel Herriges.
“There’s no parking around there!” How to hit the streets and collect the data yourself, and figure out whether your neighborhood actually has a parking shortage—or, more likely, an excess.
Read: “Write Your Local Paper to End Parking Minimums,” by Rachel Quednau.
A few tips for writing your local paper, as well as a template to get you started.
Read: ”Example Ordinances for Removing Parking Minimums.”
Just what it sounds like: Excerpts from municipal codes that demonstrate different ways to remove or decrease parking minimums. We hope these are helpful examples that you might be able to utilize in your own towns and cities.
Have other ideas on what wasteful parking spaces could be used for instead? Share it with the world for #BlackFridayParking day!
#BlackFridayParking
Even during the busiest shopping season, we have too much parking. It's time to get rid of the regulations that make it so.
John Pattison is the Community Builder for Strong Towns. In this role, he works with advocates in hundreds of communities as they start and lead local Strong Towns groups called Local Conversations. John is the author of two books, most recently Slow Church (IVP), which takes inspiration from Slow Food and the other Slow movements to help faith communities reimagine how they live life together in the neighborhood. He also co-hosts The Membership, a podcast inspired by the life and work of Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, writer, and activist. John and his family live in Silverton, Oregon. You can connect with him on Twitter at @johnepattison.
Want to start a Local Conversation, or implement the Strong Towns approach in your community? Email John.