Why Cities Are Getting Rid of Decades-Old Parking Rules

Two billion parking spots dot the country, by some estimates.That’s roughly seven spaces for every car, adding up to an area about the size of West Virginia.For some people, that’s way too many.Getting rid of spaces, housing advocates, environmentalists and real estate developers say, can give space to desperately needed housing development and help make cities more walkable and less reliant on cars.“Having some parking is important,” said Dirk Aulabaugh, head of global advisory services at Green Street, a real estate analytics firm.

“But does it need to be what we’ve historically had? I think the answer is no.”Hundreds of cities and municipalities have rolled back or completely thrown out requirements on real estate projects since the nonprofit organization Strong Towns began keeping track a decade ago.In 2022 alone, 15 of them, including San Jose, Calif., Raleigh, N.C., and Lexington, Ky., repealed their parking rules.

In late 2023, Austin became the largest U.S.city to eliminate parking minimums.

And in December, New York City lawmakers put policies in place that reduced or eliminated parking requirements for new housing in some parts of the city.What has happened in those places?Many of these cities have only recently put the changes in place so the evidence is limited, but some studies show that more housing has been built as a result of the repealed rules.In New York, Seattle and Buffalo, for example, reducing or eliminating minimums has encouraged housing development that would not have been possible under the former mandates.But like most policy changes that affect the everyday lives of a wide swath of people, changing the parking rules have received backlash from residents who are concerned that reducing requirements will lead to less parking overall and, as a result, an influx of traffic from drivers hunting for on-street spaces.These fears of inconvenience and congestion are not unfounded, said Christof Spieler, a structural engineer and...