Parking is not a community benefit, it is an attractant to the pollution, noise, and violence of cars. When we force developers to make new concessions in exchange for eliminating arbitrary and expensive parking requirements, we reinforce the narrative that more parking is somehow good, but it is not good.
If cities required new apartments to have toilets made gold, it would surely cut into profit margins. Eliminating mandatory gold toilet requirements would not be a windfall for developer profits, it would be eliminating a stupid and arbitrary requirement.
On-site parking is a luxury amenity that has significant external costs to the community. The developer who builds more parking than is required is making a generational commitment to more greenhouse gases, more traffic fatalities, longer commutes, and fewer, more expensive, homes.
The developer who builds more parking should be the one paying transit subsidies to tenants so they might drive the cars stored downstairs less often. The developer who builds more parking should be the one who provides more on-site affordable housing. Building sites with more on-site parking should have more trees and green space to counteract some of the pollution they support.
Cities should absolutely explore policies to require integrated affordable housing, transportation demand management, and greener building features. But policy that allows a developer to build car parking in lieu of affordable homes, or more trees, or transit subsidies is a backward policy.
We need to flip the script on the common narrative. New parking supply is bad for livability and that must be pointed out as often as possible.
I agree wholeheartedly but want to add that we also need to curb the subsidized street parking people have come to believe is a right. If we eliminate off-street parking only to clog streets with car storage on both sides we haven’t made any improvement to our transportation lanes. Only when the true cost of owning personal automobiles is placed completely on the owner, including storage (parking) costs will other modes of transport become the norm.
Of course! Performance based on-street management should be a given!
But I would argue that the long term damage of new structured parking (in lost opportunity and induced traffic) is more problematic than on street congestion and the on street supply isn’t getting any greater, in most cases.
Thanks for the comment!
The problem with reducing parking requirements in cities, and particularly infill development, is that cars do need a place to stay and will spill over into existing neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods absolutely would benefit from usual parking standards being applied to new development.
The fix is painful to existing neighborhoods who have to petition for new parking rules that then reduce parking freedoms they once enjoyed.
Sorry Joni, “cars do need a place to stay” and “reduce parking freedoms they once enjoyed” are not as important as allowing for enough homes for people to live in and for people to have the opportunity to live in abundant and affordable housing in areas of opportunity near their friends, families, and jobs.
Get real people. Very few people in want to take the risk of purchasing a residence without having a reasonable opportunity to park a vehicle. It does affect price and future value.
The vast majority of households in the United States own at least one car or truck whether for personal use or in the operation of their business or professional. Sorry, parking us an important amenity for most people and its value is reflected appropriately in real estate pricing.
Since nearly all existing housing has parking, people who own cars have plenty of options for finding housing with parking. If they are worried about the future value, they can buy a home with parking. The fact is, though, that parking creates many external impacts and the people who build and/or use it are rarely held responsible for mitigating or paying for those impacts. Why isn’t it fair to put that true cost on the user?