On the agenda: Cottagegrove meeting — data center (Aug 12)

VILLAGE OF COTTAGE GROVE
NOTICE OF PUBLIC MEETING
Plan Commission
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
6:30 p.m.
This meeting will take place as a hybrid meeting both virtually via Zoom and in person at Village
Hall at 221 E. Cottage Grove Road. If you are utilizing Zoom, please join the meeting from your
computer, tablet or smartphone by visitinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/87043883159?
pwd=n8fFA8FaRa4ARxNOVeFgs8JkAiCCog.1 . Y ou can also participate via phone by dialing 1
312 626 6799 and use Meeting ID 870 4388 3159 # When asked for your Participant ID, just press
#, when asked for the Passcode enter 221.You may also choose to participate by providing public
comment prior to the meeting via email to Village Clerk Lisa Kalata: [email protected]. If this is a teleconference, virtual or hybrid meeting, please review the Village of
Cottage Grove’s policy.

1. Call To Order
2. Determination Of Quorum And That The Agenda Was Properly Posted
3. Pledge Of Allegiance
4. PUBLIC APPEARANCES-Public's Opportunity To Speak
5. Discuss And Consider The Minutes From The Plan Commission Meeting Of July 15, 2026.
Documents:
7-15-26 PLAN COMMISSION MINUTES.PDF
6. Continue Discussion Of A Potential Ordinance Amendment Related To The Use Of Bird
Safety Glazing In Future Buildings.
7. Discuss Potential Elimination Of Minimum Parking Requirements.
Documents:
UCLA_MINPARKSTUDY_2026.PDF
ZONING-PRACTICE-2017-06.PDF
ZONING-PRACTICE-2020-02.PDF
STOA_PARKINGMEMO_2026.PDF
8. Future Agenda Items
9. Adjournment
This agenda has been prepared by Staff and approved by the Village President as Chair of the Plan
Commission for use at the meeting as listed above. Any item on the agenda is subject to final

8. Future Agenda Items
9. Adjournment
This agenda has been prepared by Staff and approved by the Village President as Chair of the Plan
Commission for use at the meeting as listed above. Any item on the agenda is subject to final
action. Notice: Persons needing special accommodation should call 608-839-4704 at least 24
hours prior to the meeting. It is possible that members of and possibly a quorum of members of
other governmental bodies may attend the above stated meeting to gather information; no action
will be taken by any governmental body at the above-stated meeting other than the governmental
body specifically referred to above in this notice.

VILLAGE OF COTTAGE GROVE
PLAN COMMISSION
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
MINUTES
1.
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6.

7.

8.

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12.

Call to order
Village President Kelm-Nelson called the Plan Commission meeting to order at 7:01 pm. This was a hybrid
meeting.
Determination of quorum and that the agenda was properly posted.
It was noted that a quorum was present, and that the agenda was properly posted. Roll Call was taken.
Commission members present were Cindi Kelm-Nelson, Heidi Murphy, Don Brinkmeier, John Scheffler, Jarrid
Heim and Kim Sale. Alex Jushchyshyn was absent and excused. Staff members present were Director of
Planning and Development Erin Ruth, Village Engineer Josh Straka, Village Attorney Rick Manthe and Village
Clerk Lisa Kalata.
Pledge of Allegiance
PUBLIC APPEARANCES -none
Discuss and Consider the Minutes from The Plan Commission Meeting of June 10, 2026.
Motion by Murphy to approve June 10, 2026, meeting minutes, seconded by Heim. Motion carried with a voice
vote of 6-0-0.
PUBLIC HEARING: The Public’s opportunity to provide input regarding a proposed 18-month moratorium
on data center development in the Village of Cottage Grove.
President Kelm-Nelson opened the public hearing at 7:02 pm. Barbara Kosak-Schaefer at 2026 Uphoff Rd spoke.
President Kelm-Nelson closed the public hearing at 7:05 pm.
Discuss and consider a proposed 18-month moratorium on data center development in the Village of
Cottage Grove.
Motion by Murphy to approve the ordinance with the modification to 12 months, seconded by Brinkmeier. Motion
carried with a voice vote of 6-0-0.
Discuss and consider a request from Neumann Development for approval of a Final Plat for a 38-lot
portion of Juniper Fields, a proposed 108-acre, 226-unit single-family residential subdivision.
Motion by Murphy to approve a request from Neumann Development for approval of a Final Plat for a 38-lot
portion of Juniper Fields, a proposed 108-acre, 226-unit single-family residential subdivision with staff conditions,
seconded by Brinkmeier. Motion carried with a voice vote of 6-0-0.
Discuss and consider the Public Participation Plan for the Village’s Comprehensive Plan update.
Motion by Murphy to approve the Public Participation Plan for the Village’s Comprehensive Plan, seconded by
Brinkmeier. Motion carried with a voice vote of 6-0-0.
Continue discussion of a potential ordinance amendment related to the use of bird safety glazing in future
buildings.
Staff with continue to gather more information and bring back to another meeting.
Future Agenda Items – Bird Safety Glazing topic, Comprehensive Plan, Near & Far Brewery
Adjournment
Motion by Murphy to adjourn at 7:40 pm, seconded by Scheffler. Motion carried with a voice vote of 6-0-0.

Lisa Kalata, Clerk
Village of Cottage Grove
Approved:
These minutes represent the general subject matter discussed in this meeting but do not reflect a verbatim documentation of the
subjects and conversations that took place.

UCLA
Reports
Title
The Impacts of Minimum Parking Requirements: A Research Synthesis

Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7kp8x4fq

Authors
Schwartz, Ellen
Manville, Michael
Millard-Ball, Adam

Publication Date
2026-02-27

DOI
10.17610/T6XS58

eScholarship.org

Powered by the California Digital Library
University of California

February 2026

The Impacts of
Minimum Parking
Requirements
A Research Synthesis

THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

About the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies
The UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies supports and advances cutting-edge research, the highest-quality
education, and meaningful and influential civic engagement on the many pressing transportation issues facing our
cities, state, nation and world today. The institute is part of the University of California Institute of Transportation
Studies, a four-campus consortium that includes UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UC Irvine. UCLA ITS is also a proud
partner of the Pacific Southwest Region 9 University of Transportation Center, a federally funded research
network with seven other universities.

About the UCLA Center for Parking Policy
The UCLA Center for Parking Policy supports policymakers and practitioners navigating parking policy decisions
by translating academic research into accessible resources. The center synthesizes existing academic work,
documents real-world examples of reform, identifies gaps in the literature, and develops practical tools to help
inform evidence-based parking policy. The center’s work builds on decades of expertise at UCLA in parking policy
and honors the legacy of Professor Donald Shoup.

Acknowledgments
This study was made possible by the generous support of Arnold Ventures, whose funding supports the UCLA
Center for Parking Policy, along with additional donors who contribute to the Center’s work. The authors also
thank Hannah Howland for her contributions to the graphics and figures for this project and Juan Matute for his
feedback and ideas.
The Institute of Transportation Studies and the Center for Parking Policy at UCLA acknowledge the
Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles basin and So.
Channel Islands). As a land grant institution, we pay our respects to the Honuukvetam (Ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom
(Elders) and ‘Eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.

Disclaimer
The contents of this report reflect the views of the authors, who are responsible for the facts and the accuracy of
the information presented herein.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). To view a
copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

2

February 2026

The Impacts of
Minimum Parking
Requirements
A Research Synthesis
Ellen Schwartz
Michael Manville
Adam Millard-Ball

Project ID: UCLA ITS-CPP-26-02
DOI:10.17610/T6XS58

TABLE OF
CONTENTS

THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Table of Contents
Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................................8
Introduction: The Rise of Minimum Parking Requirements and Donald Shoup’s Critique ...................................... 12
Impacts of Parking Infrastructure ............................................................................................................................. 14
Impacts on Car Ownership and Travel .................................................................................................................... 21
Parking Oversupply and the Role of Minimum Parking Requirements ................................................................... 30
Parking Minimums as Constraints on Development ................................................................................................ 40
Effects of Repealing Minimums ............................................................................................................................... 46
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................... 54
References .............................................................................................................................................................. 57

List of Tables
Table 1. Housing Cost Increases Associated with Bundled Parking ....................................................................... 16
Table 2. Research Linking Parking Availability to Increased Car Ownership ......................................................... 23
Table 3. Research Linking Residential Parking to More Driving and Less Transit Use .......................................... 26
Table 4. Research Linking Workplace Parking Benefits to Commuting Behavior .................................................. 28
Table 5. Studies Estimating Share of Land Devoted to Parking Infrastructure ....................................................... 32
Table 6. Parking Use Studies .................................................................................................................................. 35
Table 7. Studies of Post-Elimination Parking Provision Compared to Former Minimums ...................................... 47

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

List of Figures
Figure 1. Key Research Areas Examining the Impacts of Parking and Minimum Parking Requirements .................8
Figure 2. Percent Increase or Decrease in New Parking Provision Compared to Former Minimums .......................9
Figure 3. Share of Carless Households with Bundled Parking ............................................................................... 15
Figure 4. Curb Cuts for Private Parking Access in San Francisco, California......................................................... 16
Figure 5. Urban Design Impacts of Parking Infrastructure in San Francisco, California ......................................... 17
Figure 6. Life Cycle Emissions from Driving Versus Emissions from Parking Construction ................................... 19
Figure 7. Share of the “Central City” Devoted to Off-Street Parking in Anchorage, Alaska .................................... 33
Figure 8. Assessing the Extent to Which Minimum Parking Requirements Are Binding ........................................ 37
Figure 9. Construction Cost per Structured Parking Space in 17 U.S. Cities ......................................................... 41
Figure 10. How Parking Minimums Can Increase Marginal Costs and Decrease Unit Counts .............................. 44
Figure 11. How Minimum Parking Requirements Limit Commercial Development Space ..................................... 45
Figure 12. Grocery Market and Affordable Multifamily Apartment Building in Buffalo ............................................ 49
Figure 13. Housing Growth in Downtown Los Angeles ........................................................................................... 51
Figure 14. Impacts of Minimum Parking Requirements .......................................................................................... 56

6

EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY

THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Executive Summary
Across the United States and around the world, cities are increasingly reconsidering, and often repealing,
minimum parking requirements. They are doing so to align their parking policy with their housing, climate, and
mobility goals. While minimums can help increase parking availability and prevent curb parking from becoming
overcrowded, they can also impose substantial costs. This report synthesizes what we know about the impacts of
parking infrastructure, the effects of minimum parking requirements, and what happens when cities repeal them.
Figure 1 summarizes the key research areas reviewed.
Figure 1. Key Research Areas Examining the Impacts of Parking and Minimum Parking Requirements

We examine the substantial research literature examining the relationship between parking and travel behavior,
as well as the smaller set of studies exploring how parking infrastructure affects housing affordability, urban
design and walkability, environmental outcomes, public health, and public finance. Our review suggests that
parking infrastructure increases the cost of housing, detracts from the aesthetic of urban environments,
undermines walkability, reduces space for parks and natural areas, contributes to urban heat islands, and
generates stormwater runoff that pollutes water, increases flooding risks, and degrades habitats. Parking
infrastructure also limits tax revenues, reduces urban density, and generates supply chain emissions during its
construction that are harmful to respiratory and cardiovascular health. Finally, there is substantial evidence that
more parking leads to more vehicle ownership and driving. Collectively, this research demonstrates that
excessive parking infrastructure has many unintended consequences.
After summarizing parking’s impacts, we draw on studies of various cities and building types to show how much
land it occupies and how many spaces sit empty, even during peak demand. The research makes clear that
parking is often oversupplied, in part because of minimum parking requirements. Minimums are often, though not
always, binding on developer decisions. Commercial chains, banks, grocery stores, and luxury housing frequently
provide more parking than required, while service-oriented retail and affordable housing projects tend to stick to

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

the minimum. In general, whether minimums bind depends on their stringency, the type of development, and the
urban context. Minimum parking requirements do not fully explain parking oversupply, but they do play a
significant role.
Minimum parking requirements also limit the construction of new homes and businesses. Obtaining additional
land for surface parking or building parking structures significantly increases development costs, which, in some
cases, can leave buildings vacant or parcels undeveloped, especially in infill areas. Research also shows that
minimums reduce the number of housing units per building, by (1) requiring parking that takes up space that could
otherwise house residents and (2) incentivizing developers to create fewer, larger units to avoid constructing
additional parking — especially when adding one or two more units would trigger the need for another level of
costly structured parking. By constraining development, minimums also decrease density and lower land values.
Because it is difficult to track homes never built or businesses never started, research on parking requirements
and development relies more on anecdotal evidence and logical reasoning than other areas of study, but the
findings remain compelling, with consistent patterns emerging across multiple studies.
Recent parking reforms have created new opportunities to study the impacts of lifting parking requirements. A key
finding is that eliminating parking requirements does not eliminate parking. Developers generally continue to
supply spaces, but usually fewer than the prior mandates required (see Figure 2 below and Table 7 on page 47).
In some cities and for certain types of projects, developers provide as much — or more — parking than previously
required. Where minimums were low to begin with, or where developers anticipate high demand for parking, lifting
minimums makes little difference. In contrast, lifting minimums is more impactful for projects in dense or transitaccessible areas, or where surplus parking is already available nearby.
Figure 2. Percent Increase or Decrease in New Parking Provision Compared to Former Minimums

Data sources: Sohoni & Lee, 2025; Nelson et al., 1997; Hess & Rehler, 2021; Gabbe et al., 2020; Manville, 2013;
Guo & Ren, 2012; Sohoni & Lee, 2024.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

A few studies examining the repeal of minimum parking requirements also look at outcomes beyond reduced
parking supply. These studies find that eliminating minimums encourages adaptive reuse, boosts housing
development in areas where minimums are removed, and expands housing options by enabling smaller units and
units without on-site parking. Repeal is also associated with more active street frontages and increased municipal
parking revenue.
Eliminating minimum parking requirements does not eliminate the environmental, social, and economic harms of
parking, but it can reduce their severity. Research indicates that the early effects of repeal are modest rather than
dramatic. After requirements are lifted, drivers make more efficient use of existing parking infrastructure, and
developers also continue to supply new parking. As a result, the total number of spaces and vehicles citywide
may continue to grow while the number of parking spaces per capita declines over time. Minimum parking
requirements exert a long shadow, having been entrenched in U.S. cities for more than 75 years. Even after
repeal, cities will be dealing with the legacy of an oversupply of parking for many years to come.

10

CONTENTS

THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Introduction: The Rise of Minimum Parking
Requirements and Donald Shoup’s Critique
Zoning codes across the United States require each new building and business to provide a minimum number of
off-street parking spaces. These requirements often mandate more space be devoted to parking than to the
building itself. For example, before the City Council in San Jose, California voted to abolish minimum parking
requirements in 2022, the city had required 25 parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of dining area for
restaurants. Since each parking space requires roughly 330 square feet, the code had required a restaurant’s
parking lot to be eight times the size of the restaurant itself (Shoup, 2018). Cities prescribe strict parking
minimums for hundreds of land uses, encompassing everything from dance halls and skating rinks to laundromats
and day cares. These detailed minimum parking requirements, now standard in nearly every U.S. city, have a
history stretching back nearly a century.
Minimum parking requirements first appeared in U.S. zoning ordinances in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when
cities were grappling with the rapid rise of automobile ownership and growing concerns about overcrowded curbs
and congestion caused by cars cruising for parking. From these early beginnings, minimum parking requirements
spread quickly, as cities often copied parking ratios from the ordinances of other cities (Willson, 2000). One
survey found that 17% of cities had off‑street parking requirements in 1946, and five years later, the share had
jumped to 70% (Shoup, 2011). Over time, the practice became further standardized through professional
guidance, most notably the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ Parking Generation manual and the American
Planning Association’s Parking Standards, which offered ready-made sets of ratios that cities across the country
incorporated into their codes (Institute of Transportation Engineers, 1987; American Planning Association, 2002;
Willson, 2000).
For years, parking received little attention from academics. Despite the large share of urban land devoted to
parking and parking’s central role in transportation, parking requirements were never even mentioned in the
leading transportation or land use planning textbooks (Shoup, 1999b), perhaps because transportation scholars
considered parking a land use issue, while land use scholars considered parking a transportation issue. This
began to change with the work of Donald Shoup.
Shoup highlighted numerous flaws with the widespread practice of using parking ratios from the Parking
Generation manual to set minimum parking requirements (Shoup, 1999b). First, Shoup pointed out how the
manual reported parking generation rates with inappropriately high levels of precision; for example, restaurants
had a parking generation rate of 9.95 spaces per 1,000 square feet of floor area. Such precision implied a degree
of accuracy the data could not support, since half of the parking generation rates were based on four or fewer
studies, and 22% were based on a single study. Second, parking demand varied widely across sites, so even
larger sample sizes did little to improve accuracy. For instance, the restaurant rate relied on 18 studies, yet across
these studies, the number of parked cars per 1,000 square feet of floor area ranged from 3.55 to 15.92, and floor
area explained only 4% of the variation in parking demand. This is a large range in ratios, a small amount of
predictive power, and perhaps most of all: a ratio of 3.55 or 15.92 implies that planners can know the demand for
parking down to one one-hundredth of a parking space, which strains credulity even in the best of circumstances.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Finally, because almost all parking is free, the rates reflect only the demand for free parking (Shoup, 1999b). If
drivers paid for their own parking, as they pay for their own cars and fuel, they would likely choose to use less
parking.
Minimum parking requirements can often solve the problems they set out to address — overcrowded curb space
and drivers circling for parking — but they do so at a high cost. In most places, the requirements have led to an
oversupply of parking and ensured that it is invariably given away for free. As this report explains, a large volume
of research demonstrates how minimum parking requirements worsen congestion and pollution, encourage
sprawl, increase housing costs, degrade urban design, undermine walkability, damage the economy, and
penalize people who cannot afford or choose not to own a car.
Since Donald Shoup first began publishing about parking, scholarly interest in the topic has grown considerably.
Researchers have examined the wide-ranging impacts of parking infrastructure, including effects on housing
affordability, the environment, and travel behavior. They have measured how much urban land is dedicated to
parking and how many spaces remain unused, and they have analyzed how minimum parking requirements
contribute to excess supply. Other studies have estimated the monetary costs of parking mandates and
demonstrated how they can limit new homes and businesses. This body of work has shaped planning practice,
and over the past decade, an increasing number of cities have repealed their minimum parking requirements. In
several cases, enough time has passed for researchers to observe the early effects of these reforms.
This report synthesizes current knowledge on the impacts of parking infrastructure, the effects of minimum
parking requirements, and the outcomes of their repeal. By integrating these findings, it builds on Shoup’s
pioneering work and highlights how parking policy shapes many different urban outcomes.
The synthesis is organized into the following sections:
1. Impacts of Parking Infrastructure: Parking infrastructure negatively affects a wide range of urban
outcomes.
2. Impacts on Car Ownership and Travel Behavior: Parking affects car ownership, driving, and transit
use.
3. Parking Oversupply and the Role of Minimum Parking Requirements: Parking is often provided in
excess, and parking requirements often contribute to oversupply.
4. Parking Minimums as Constraints on Development: Parking requirements can limit the development
of new homes and businesses, reducing density and decreasing land values.
5. Effects of Repealing Minimums: Eliminating minimums generally slows the growth of new parking
supply and often produces the intended effects.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Impacts of Parking Infrastructure
Parking infrastructure negatively affects a wide range of urban outcomes. While parking serves a necessary
function in modern cities, it also comes with negative side-effects — externalities. Provided unwisely or in excess,
parking can needlessly increase housing costs, undermine walkability, degrade urban design, reduce space for
parks and natural areas, contribute to urban heat, and generate stormwater runoff that pollutes water, increases
flood risk, and degrades aquatic habitats. Parking construction also produces emissions harmful to respiratory
and cardiovascular health. Unless it is built underground (which is enormously expensive), parking also competes
for land with other uses, including businesses and homes. A proliferation of parking can in this way reduce urban
density and can limit tax revenue. While the benefits of additional parking may sometimes justify these outcomes,
rules like minimum parking requirements — which mandate that large quantities of parking be provided regardless
of their cost — are likely to exacerbate all these problems, while delivering relatively smaller corresponding
benefits.
A substantial body of research now examines parking and its impacts. Much of this work focuses on how parking
influences car ownership and travel behavior. Researchers have paid less attention to the non-travel impacts of
parking infrastructure, perhaps because scholars in other fields view parking primarily as a transportation issue or
see its non-travel effects as either too difficult to isolate or too obvious to study. For example, only a handful of
studies directly address the urban design impacts of surface parking. Similarly, many studies address the
environmental impacts of impervious surfaces, but few focus on parking specifically. However, the evidence that
does exist suggests that excess parking supply has significant consequences.
Many parking infrastructure studies provide strong empirical evidence, though they may focus on only a single
geographic area or identify associations rather than causality. Some parking impacts also prove difficult to
measure. For example, broader economic and land use trends can complicate efforts to isolate the impacts of
parking infrastructure, and parking shapes urban design and the pedestrian experience in ways that resist easy
measurement. Overall, theory and empirical evidence point in a consistent direction, but they do not always clarify
the magnitude of parking infrastructure impacts or how impacts vary across different urban contexts.

Bundled Parking Raises Rents and Home Prices
As with any other amenity, on-site parking increases the price of housing. If the renter or homeowner wants that
amenity, there is no issue with bundling it into the rent or sales price. However, households with fewer cars than
parking spaces end up paying for an amenity they cannot use, and households who might prefer less expensive
off-site parking lose the chance to save money. Three studies show that housing units with bundled parking have
higher costs per square foot of living space than similar units without it (see Table 1 on page 16). Two of the
studies analyze specific neighborhoods, and one uses national survey data.
In downtown Los Angeles, bundled parking added, on average, $283 per month to rents and $61,000 to
condominium prices (Manville, 2013; amounts inflated to 2025 dollars). In San Francisco, bundled parking added
$79,000 to the purchase price of a condo and $95,000 to the cost of a single-family home (Jia & Wachs, 1999;
amounts inflated to 2025 dollars). The San Francisco researchers calculated that without bundled parking, 20%
more households could afford a condo, and 24% more households could afford a single-family home. Evidence
from the American Housing Survey supports the patterns seen in specific cities. Nationally, renters with bundled

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

garage parking pay 17% more for rent — an average of $204 more per month, or roughly $2,450 more per year
(Gabbe & Pierce, 2017; amounts inflated to 2025 dollars).
Households who value on-site parking may be willing to pay these higher costs, but the widespread bundling of
parking, when viewed alongside car ownership data, suggests that some households would benefit from the
option to choose housing with less parking. Among carless households, who presumably attach little or no value
to on-site parking, 71% still have a bundled space (Gabbe & Pierce, 2017; see Figure 3). Most homes without
parking are older, while almost all new housing comes with bundled parking. Housing without parking is also
unevenly distributed geographically: for example, 77% of the new homes without bundled parking built between
1999 and 2003 were in the New York metropolitan area, even though this region accounted for just 1% of all new
housing nationwide (Manville, 2016).
Figure 3. Share of Carless Households with Bundled Parking

Data source: Gabbe & Pierce (2017).
Although some unbundled options exist, the ubiquity of bundled parking greatly limits the availability of housing
without parking and results in many carless or one-car households paying for spaces they cannot use. These
added costs accumulate across the housing market, contributing to higher overall housing expenses, which in
turn have been linked to a range of downstream effects, including impacts on public health and homelessness
(Garber et al., 2024).

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Table 1. Housing Cost Increases Associated with Bundled Parking
Study

Location

Type

Cost Increase Associated with
Bundled Parking

Gabbe & Pierce, 2017

United States

Rent

$204/month
($2,450/year, a 17% increase)

Manville, 2013

Downtown Los
Angeles

Rent

$283/month

Condos

$61,000 higher selling price

Jia & Wachs, 1999

Six San Francisco Condos
neighborhoods
Single-family homes

$79,000 higher selling price
$95,000 higher selling price

Note. All values adjusted to September 2025 dollars using CPI-U (FRED series CPIAUCSL).

Off-Street Parking Reduces Public On-Street Parking
Driveway access to private parking lots and garages requires curb cuts, which remove public parking spaces from
the street (see Figure 4). For example, in San Francisco’s Mission District neighborhood, curb cuts eliminated 356
out of 878 public street spaces, or roughly 30% of the total curbside length (Brown, 2007). 1 Adding a curb cut to
provide access to a single off-street space often reduces use of the area’s total parking supply, since it removes
curb parking while creating a private space that others cannot use when empty (Shoup, 2011). Some cities,
including San Francisco and Hermosa Beach in California, allow residents to park in front of their own driveways,
but even when curb cuts do not fully remove street parking spaces in front of private driveways from circulation,
they still privatize what was formerly public space.
Figure 4. Curb Cuts for Private Parking Access in San Francisco, California
Source: Photo by Mary Brown, from her 2007 MA thesis Shifting
Landscapes of Mobility: Reconfiguring Space in the Mission
District for Automobiles, San Francisco State University.
Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.
Available at: https://marybrown.wordpress.com/wpcontent/uploads/2008/01/findingspart2.pdf

1 Since there were only 883 cars registered in the study neighborhood, all but five of them could have parked on

the street simultaneously if garages and curb cuts had not been added.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Parking Infrastructure Undermines Walkability and Degrades Urban Design
Walkable urban neighborhoods are characterized by storefronts and other active uses, safe sidewalks, and an
abundance of other pedestrians. Research demonstrates the specific mechanisms through which parking
undermines these characteristics. First, curb cuts reduce pedestrian safety and comfort by introducing frequent
vehicle crossings along sidewalks (Loukaitou-Sideris et al., 2007). Second, abundant parking lots expand the
distances between destinations (Mukhija & Shoup, 2006). Third, parking facilities that are directly connected to
major trip generators drain streets and public spaces of pedestrian activity. For example, Shoup (2011) compares
Disney Hall in Los Angeles with Louise Davies Hall in San Francisco. Los Angeles requires, at a minimum, 50
times more parking for concert halls than San Francisco allows as a maximum. Concertgoers in San Francisco
emerge onto busy sidewalks with active storefronts, while those in Los Angeles must navigate a six-level
underground parking garage and may never step out onto a sidewalk at all.
Visible parking areas can also make sidewalks and streets feel exposed and uninviting, compared with the more
welcoming pedestrian environment created by tree-lined sidewalks and active storefronts. Brown (2007)
documents the widespread removal of front yards, gardens, and stoops of Victorian homes in San Francisco (see
Figure 5) and the substitution of active storefronts with mandatory garages, creating an incongruous ground-floor
façade and breaking the visual continuity of the street (see Figure 5). In Los Angeles, parking requirements
spurred the rise of ‘dingbat’ apartments — housing built on stilts above parking — which reduce street-level
engagement and undermine walkability (Shoup, 2011). Mukhija and Shoup (2006) note how some cities have
taken steps to combat these impacts; for example, West Hollywood, California prohibits use of a residential front
yard for parking and requires landscaping to screen cars from view.
Figure 5. Urban Design Impacts of Parking Infrastructure in San Francisco, California

Source: Photos by Mary Brown, from her 2007 MA thesis Shifting Landscapes of Mobility: Reconfiguring Space in
the Mission District for Automobiles, San Francisco State University. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.
Left photo: https://marybrown.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/introduction_toc.pdf
Right photo: https://marybrown.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/discussionandanalysis.pdf
McCahill and Garrick (2010) examine how different approaches to parking and street design shaped urban form
and transportation patterns in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut. The two New England cities
had been similar along a number of transportation-related dimensions in the 1960s, before their policies and
priorities diverged. In Hartford, vast parking areas were created as part of urban renewal, reflecting the belief that

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

downtown needed more parking to compete with suburban shopping centers. These new lots separated
residential neighborhoods from the downtown core. By contrast, Cambridge built two parking garages but set
maximum parking limits for new development and prohibited parking in certain areas, instead investing in walking,
biking, and transit. While parking and other transportation policies are only one part of the story — the two cities
have very different industrial compositions and have experienced vastly different economic trajectories — the
outcomes are striking. Over nearly 50 years, Hartford increased the total area dedicated to parking by 265%,
compared with Cambridge’s 130% increase. By the end of the study period, the walking rate in Cambridge was
twice as high as in Hartford, where it had declined substantially.

Parking Infrastructure Contributes to Urban Heat
Parking infrastructure is typically composed of asphalt and concrete, impervious materials that absorb and store
heat, contributing to higher urban temperatures. Higher temperatures discourage people from spending time
outdoors, reduce productivity, and contribute to a growing number of heat-related deaths each year. Urban heat is
often most intense in disadvantaged communities, disproportionately affecting lower-income residents who may
have limited access to air conditioning (Manware et al., 2022; Romitti et al., 2022). The heat also strains urban
infrastructure: roads rut more quickly, water pumps are more likely to fail, and water quality can decline, while
energy use, air conditioning demand, and water consumption all increase. A study conducted in Phoenix, where
parking covers roughly 10% of the land, found that parking infrastructure accounts for 29% of the region’s total
heat emitted from pavements and vehicles on a typical day (Hoehne et al., 2022). Parked cars, especially darkcolored ones, can further raise air temperatures (Matias et al., 2025).
Strategies to alleviate the heat that parking lots generate come with trade-offs (Hoehne et al., 2022). For example,
reflective pavements can reduce urban heat at the city scale, but these reflective surfaces also increase radiant
heat exposure at street level, making conditions less comfortable for pedestrians (Middel et al., 2020). Hoehne et
al. (2022) find mixed evidence on whether solar panels covering parking lots also absorb and radiate heat. They
also describe how planting trees could provide shade, but parking lots are difficult places to maintain large,
healthy shade trees, as the surrounding pavement raises soil temperatures, accelerating evaporation and
increasing water needs.

Parking Lots Contribute to Water Pollution, Flooding, and Habitat Degradation
When it rains, a variety of pollutants from parking areas — including heavy metals, oils and fuels, radiator fluids,
and plastic debris — enter streams and other watercourses. As impervious surfaces, parking lots generate
stormwater runoff, which is the nation’s leading threat to water quality (Arnold & Gibbons, 1996). Impervious
surfaces also exacerbate flooding (Garber et al., 2024), and damage aquatic habitats through eroding stream
banks and increasing sediment (Albanese & Matlack, 1998). Most studies find it challenging to isolate the specific
contribution of surface parking to flooding and water quality, as opposed to roads, paved yards, and other
impervious surfaces. One notable exception (Davis et al., 2010a) estimated that surface parking lots (excluding
driveways, parking for single family homes, and street parking) in Tippecanoe County, Indiana increased
stormwater runoff by more than 900%.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

The Life Cycle of Parking Construction Harms the Environment and Public Health
Life cycle analyses show that the construction of parking can generate pollution comparable to driving itself
(Chester et al., 2010). For example, sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emissions cause respiratory problems, and the SO₂
emitted from energy use in the supply chain exceeds the SO₂ emitted from driving. Hot-mix asphalt plants and the
mixing and laying of asphalt produce particulate matter (PM₁₀), which is harmful to cardiovascular health. Parking
construction generates PM₁₀ emissions comparable to those from driving. Parking construction also generates
greenhouse gas emissions, though at lower levels than vehicle use. Figure 6 compares per-passenger-kilometer
emissions from driving with those from parking construction.
Figure 6. Life Cycle Emissions from Driving Versus Emissions from Parking Construction

Data source: Chester et al. (2010).

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Surface Parking May Limit Property Tax Revenue Potential
Parking infrastructure, particularly surface parking, often generates less property tax revenue than land used for
buildings. Blanc et al. (2014) analyzed parking in the central business districts of six U.S. cities and found a
consistent pattern: where the share of surface parking increased, the local property tax base weakened. However,
the research does not establish the causal role of parking; a large share of land used as surface parking may
simply reflect preexisting urban decline.

Parking Supply Undermines Density
Urban density–having more people, jobs, and activities concentrated in a given area–offers a wide range of
economic, social, and environmental benefits, including enabling more efficient and sustainable travel patterns
(Stevens, 2017). Parking mechanistically reduces density through occupying land, and so a first-order estimate of
its impact depends on how much land parking occupies (see section beginning on page 30). Manville et al. (2013)
compared Los Angeles and New York City, as well as different neighborhoods within New York City, and found
that the differences in population density between different areas partly reflected variation in residential parking
supply.
However, urban economic models highlight a second-order impact: when parking infrastructure is abundant and
most households expect free parking, households exhibit a greater preference for more distant housing locations,
further undermining density and increasing sprawl. For example, Franco’s (2017) spatial general equilibrium
model indicates that more downtown parking lowers the cost of driving, leading households to live farther from the
city center in lower-density surroundings.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Impacts on Car Ownership and Travel
More parking means more cars, more driving, and less transit use. A large body of research examines how
parking affects car ownership and travel behavior. Evidence consistently shows that parking availability and
convenience strongly influence whether households own vehicles and how much they drive. This section
summarizes studies that link residential parking to car ownership and studies that link residential, workplace, or
citywide parking to travel behavior.
Residential studies focus mainly on the availability of parking, rather than its price. Workplace studies focus
primarily on price, but pricing generally arises only when parking is scarce and therefore also serves as an
indicator of limited supply.
Overall, the research on the relationship between parking supply and travel behavior has become increasingly
robust. Both residential and workplace parking studies draw on detailed observational data, natural experiments,
and regression models to identify causal effects. Studies of citywide or area-wide parking supply can rarely
establish causality to the same extent, given the many confounding variables, but they do identify consistent
correlations between parking supply and travel behavior. However, most studies focus on urban areas; additional
research could clarify whether and to what extent similar patterns may hold in less densely populated places.
Even so, the cumulative evidence is compelling, and findings across diverse settings and methods are remarkably
consistent: greater parking supply substantially increases vehicle ownership and driving. Perhaps most
surprisingly, several studies in major urban areas find that transit ridership seems to depend more on parking
supply than on transit service quality.

Home Parking Supply Impacts Car Ownership
Parking spaces are often worth more than the cars that use them (Shoup, 2014). When spaces are bundled into
the cost of rent, the opportunity cost of owning a car falls: households pay for parking whether they use it or not,
so not owning a car doesn’t save them any money on parking. Even if parking costs are not bundled, on-site
parking makes car ownership and use more convenient. As a result, households are more likely to purchase
additional vehicles when the building provides parking. Research from both neighborhood-level surveys and
national datasets consistently shows a strong relationship between parking availability and vehicle ownership.
Some of this effect is due to self-selection: car owners tend to choose homes with parking. Even when
researchers account for self-selection, however, the pattern holds: the more parking there is, the more cars
people own.
To see how parking availability affects car ownership, three studies surveyed residents by mail. In San Francisco,
an affordable housing lottery, open to households earning up to 120% of the area median income, created a
“natural experiment”: since winning the lottery provides such a major housing benefit, recipients typically accept
any available unit, regardless of parking or transportation options. In buildings without on-site parking, only 38% of
households own a car (and presumably park on the street or pay to rent an off-street space nearby). By contrast,
in buildings with at least one parking space included per unit, more than 81% of households own a car. Similar
results were found even after accounting for income and the level of access to other modes of transportation
(Millard-Ball et al., 2021). Because these findings come from a natural experiment, the study provides particularly
strong evidence that bundled parking causally increases vehicle ownership.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

The other two studies that used mail surveys did not control for self-selection, but did control for other variables,
and found similar patterns. Chatman (2013) found that parking supply was the greatest predictor of vehicle
ownership in transit-oriented neighborhoods in New Jersey. Households with fewer than one off-street space per
adult owned 0.16 fewer vehicles per adult, and those with low off-street and on-street parking availability owned
0.29 fewer vehicles per adult. Meanwhile, doubling the number of bus stops within a mile radius corresponded to
only 0.08 fewer vehicles per adult. In Australia, a survey of 1,316 residents across three cities found a similar
pattern: households without bundled off-street parking owned an average of 0.27 vehicles, compared with 1.06
vehicles for households with one parking space and 1.51 vehicles for households with two spaces (De Gruyter et
al., 2025).
Guo (2013a) used aerial photography and survey data to examine the relationship between parking and car
ownership in the New York City region. The study found that 80% of the households with off-street parking owned
cars, compared with 49% for households that relied solely on street parking. The ease of finding street parking
also influenced car ownership even among households that had off-street parking: where street parking was free
and readily available, car ownership was 9% higher, which translated to roughly 165,000 additional cars in the
study area (Guo, 2013b).
Studies using American Housing Survey data show a similar relationship between parking supply and car
ownership that extends beyond the local study areas mentioned above. Manville (2016) found that households
with bundled parking were two to three times more likely to own a car, even after accounting for other household
characteristics and self-selection. He found similar results among public housing residents, whose limited ability to
choose their housing unit provides a “natural experiment,” (similar to the San Francisco example above)
reinforcing the finding that bundled parking directly causes vehicle ownership. Using more recent survey data,
Manville and Pinski (2020) found consistent results: households without bundled parking were more than three
times as likely as those with bundled spaces to have no vehicles. Ding and Manville (2025) combined data from
the American Housing Survey and the California Household Travel Survey and found that households with
bundled parking owned, on average, 0.23 more vehicles per household.
Manville et al. (2013) analyzed parking and vehicle ownership across and within Los Angeles and New York City
and found a clear relationship, though not an explicitly causal one, between car ownership and parking supply.
Differences in parking supply mirrored differences in minimum parking requirements, and within New York City,
each 10% increase in minimum parking requirements was associated with a 5% increase in vehicles per square
mile and a 4% increase in vehicles per person. Bundled parking was more common where parking requirements
were higher, and the effect of minimum parking requirements on car ownership was greater even than the effect
of household income. Drawing on data from 56 Swedish cities, McAslan and Sprei (2023) also found higher
parking requirements were associated with greater car ownership, but the association was not statistically
significant.
Table 2 summarizes the key findings from the research above. Specific findings vary based on location and study
methodology, but the pattern is clear: bundled off-street parking and readily available on-street parking increase
car ownership.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Table 2. Research Linking Parking Availability to Increased Car Ownership
Study

Location/Sample

Key Findings

Millard-Ball
et al., 2021

San Francisco affordable
housing lottery

With at least 1 off-street space per unit: 81% of households had
a car
Without off-street parking: 38% of households had a car
*Controlling for self-selection

Chatman,
2013

Transit-oriented
neighborhoods, New Jersey

Under 1 off-street space per adult: 0.16 fewer vehicles per adult
Under 1 off-street parking space per adult and scarce on-street
parking: 0.29 fewer vehicles per adult

De Gruyter
et al., 2025

Perth, Melbourne, and
Sydney, Australia

No off-street spaces: average 0.27 vehicles per household
1 off-street space: average 1.06 vehicles per household
2 off-street spaces: average 1.51 vehicles per household

Guo, 2013a

New York City region

With off-street parking: 80% of households had a car
Without off-street parking: 49% of households had a car

Guo, 2013b

New York City region

Among households with off-street parking, car ownership was
9% higher when on-street parking was also free and readily
available.

Manville,
2016

National (American Housing
Survey)

Households without bundled parking were 2-3 times more likely
to be car-free.
*Controlling for self-selection

Manville &
National (American Housing
Pinski, 2020 Survey)

Households without bundled parking were more than 3 times
more likely to be car-free.

Ding &
Manville,
2025

California (California
Household Travel Survey +
American Housing Survey)

The presence of bundled parking was associated with 0.23 more
vehicles per household.

Manville et
al. 2013

New York City urbanized area

Differences in parking supply mirrored differences in minimum
parking requirements. Each 10% increase in residential minimum
parking requirements was associated with 5% more
vehicles/square mile and 4% more vehicles/person.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Residential Parking Availability and Convenience Affect Driving and Transit Use
It follows that if greater parking availability increases car ownership, it will also increase driving. Car-free
households drive an average of 3,800 miles per year, compared with 12,300 miles for households with cars
(Manville, 2016). Many of the studies cited in the car ownership section above also find that a greater parking
supply results in more driving. When parking is free and convenient, driving also becomes cheaper and more
convenient. Conversely, when parking is limited, people have stronger incentives to consider alternatives. Multiple
well-designed studies show that parking availability affects transit use, often with effects exceeding those of
transit accessibility.
Parking availability influences travel even among car-owning households. Several studies have isolated the effect
of bundled parking or parking convenience on vehicle travel. Among otherwise similar households with the same
car ownership levels, those with bundled off-street parking drive more. Additionally, among similar households
with off-street parking, those with more convenient access to their spaces drive more. This suggests that in
neighborhoods where curb parking is scarce, a household may think twice about driving for a given trip if it means
giving up a coveted on-street space.
The “natural experiment” created by San Francisco’s affordable housing lottery revealed that driving frequency
rose with parking supply: every 0.43 additional parking spaces per household made residents 7% more likely to
drive to work and 7% less likely to take transit (Millard-Ball et al., 2021). The same study found that access to a
parking space has an effect on transit use three times as large as the effect of living in a neighborhood with good
transit access, and that parking access significantly reduces the frequency of walking. Similarly, Chatman (2013)
found that parking availability affected driving more than any of the other factors he examined did, including transit
access. Limited off-street parking (under one space per household) was associated with a 40% reduction in auto
commuting, and households with constrained on- and off-street parking took 25% fewer vehicle-based grocery
trips.
Manville et al. (2013) found that differences in parking supply (which mirrored differences in minimum parking
requirements) predicted transit use more than the quality of transit access did; within the New York City urbanized
area, transit use was more powerfully associated with parking than with proximity to the subway. Each 10%
increase in residential parking requirements was associated with a 4% increase in auto commuting and a 2%
decrease in transit commuting. The study also attributed Manhattan’s extraordinarily low drive-alone commute
share (only one-eighth that of Los Angeles) largely to its lower parking supply and lower prevalence of bundled
residential parking. Weinberger (2012) also studied the effects of parking in the New York City region. She
estimated the residential off-street parking supply for three New York City boroughs and found that the effect of
residential parking on auto commuting was more than twice as large as the effect of transit accessibility. Even
after controlling for car ownership, households with off-street parking at home showed higher rates of auto
commuting into Manhattan.
Using a national dataset, Manville (2016) found that bundled parking was strongly associated with more driving to
work; much of that association was likely via the intermediate channel of encouraging vehicle ownership. A later
study showed that bundled parking is associated with more driving even beyond its effect on car ownership:
overall, households without bundled parking spent about 50% less on gasoline; after controlling for car ownership,
they still spent 17% less — equivalent to driving roughly 4,000 fewer miles per year — than similar households
with bundled parking (Manville & Pinski, 2020). The households without bundled parking were also more than
twice as likely to use transit; in fact, transit use was more closely tied to unbundled parking than to poverty. In
California, compared with otherwise similar households (controlling for factors other than car ownership), those

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

with bundled parking drove an average of 14.6 more miles per day — more than 20% of the average daily
household vehicle travel (Ding & Manville, 2025). The association between increased vehicle travel and bundled
parking was even larger than the association between vehicle travel and an additional household vehicle.
Households with bundled parking also took an average of 0.45 fewer daily transit trips.
Guo (2013a) defined home parking convenience to encompass both parking certainty and parking ease. Certainty
comes from having a guaranteed off-street space, while ease refers to the ability to find and access parking
without difficulty, such as on uncrowded streets or without needing to navigate narrow or fenced driveways and
garages. To examine the impact of parking certainty, Guo compared car use among households based on
different types of parking access: garage parking, driveway parking, or street parking only. After controlling for
land use, transit, and household characteristics, the households without the certainty of an off-street space used
their cars only half as often as those with driveway or garage parking. To examine the impact of parking ease,
Guo compared driving among households with the same parking options. After controlling for car ownership, Guo
found that among households with garage access, those who parked on the street made 39% more unlinked car
trips and traveled 37% more miles than those who parked on-site, suggesting that they perceived street parking
as more convenient than garage parking. For households with driveway access, driving did not differ significantly
between those who parked on the street versus in their driveway.
Currans et al. (2023) used survey data and a statistical model to link parking supply not only to mode share, but
also to vehicle miles traveled. They examined the relationship between residential off-street parking and driving in
Los Angeles County, assuming that parking affects driving primarily by influencing vehicle ownership. Their model
estimated that households living in buildings with constrained parking (under 1 off-street space per unit) drove
10–23% fewer miles, even after controlling for household and neighborhood characteristics.
While policymakers may wish to decrease the share of trips made by automobile, lower numbers of total trips
could reflect limited access to opportunities, rather than a simple shift of some vehicle trips to other modes of
transportation. Two studies examined whether limited parking was associated with decreased travel or access to
opportunity. In a study of parking and travel behavior in Norway, Christiansen et al. (2017) found that the
likelihood of driving decreased as the distance to the home parking space increased; a farther away parking spot
encouraged some car owners to choose another mode but did not reduce the total number of trips. Similarly, low
parking access in San Francisco did not harm commute length, ability to switch jobs, or employment outcomes
(Millard-Ball et al., 2021).
Table 3 summarizes the key findings from the research above. Findings vary based on the sample and study
methodology, but the pattern is clear: off-street parking increases driving and undermines transit.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Table 3. Research Linking Residential Parking to More Driving and Less Transit Use
Study

Location/Sample Driving-Related Findings

Transit-Related Findings

Millard-Ball et
al., 2021

San Francisco
affordable housing
lottery buildings

Every 0.43 additional parking spaces per household
made residents 7% more likely to drive to work.

Every 0.43 additional parking spaces per
household made residents 7% less likely
to take transit.
The effect of parking supply on transit
commuting was over 3 times as large as
the effect of transit accessibility.

Chatman,
2013

Transit-oriented
neighborhoods,
New Jersey

Under 1 off-street space per adult: 40% reduction in
auto commuting
Under 1 off-street parking space per adult and scarce
on-street parking: 25% fewer vehicle-based grocery
trips

Driving was more influenced by parking
availability than by transit access.

Manville et al.,
2013

New York City
urbanized area

Differences in parking supply mirrored differences in
parking requirements. Each 10% increase in residential
parking requirements was associated with a 4%
increase in the share of auto commuting.

Differences in parking supply mirrored
differences in parking requirements. Each
10% increase in residential parking
requirements was associated with a 2%
decrease in the share of transit
commuting.
Transit use was more powerfully
associated with parking requirements than
with proximity to the subway.

Weinberger,
2012

Brooklyn, Bronx,
and Queens
neighborhoods in
New York City

Even after controlling for car ownership, more off-street
parking per unit was associated with more driving.

The effect of off-street parking access on
auto commuting into Manhattan was more
than twice as large as the effect of transit
accessibility.

Manville &
Pinski, 2020

National (American
Housing Survey)

Households with zero bundled parking spaces spent
roughly 50% less on gasoline. Even after controlling for
car ownership and other characteristics, households
without bundled parking spent 17% less on gasoline.

Even after controlling for car ownership
and other characteristics, households
without bundled parking were more than
twice as likely to use transit.

Ding &
Manville, 2025

California
(California
Household Travel
Survey + American
Housing Survey)

Bundled parking was associated with 14.6 more
household daily vehicle miles traveled.

Bundled parking was associated with 0.45
fewer household daily transit trips.

Guo, 2013a

New York City
Region

Households without an off-street space used their cars
only half as often as those with driveway or garage
parking.
Controlling for car ownership, households with garage
access who parked on the street made 39% more
unlinked trips and drove 37% more miles than those
who parked on-site.

N/A

Currans et al.,
2023

LA County

Under 1 off-street space per unit was associated with
an estimated 10–23 percentage point decrease in
vehicle miles traveled.

N/A

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

The Price and Availability of Parking at Work Impact Commute Choices
Across studies, employer-paid parking was tied to more solo driving, whereas charging employees for parking
shifted travel toward walking, biking, and transit. Most research on workplace parking focuses on pricing rather
than supply. However, pricing generally emerges only where parking is scarce. Where parking is plentiful, it is
difficult to charge for, since drivers could easily find free spots nearby.
Shoup (1995) compiled seven case studies documenting how employer-paid parking reduces solo driving to work.
Some studies compared matched samples of employees with and without free parking, while others compared
commuting behavior before and after employers stopped offering free parking. On average, when employees paid
for their own parking, the share of solo drivers fell by 25 percentage points, and 19 fewer cars were driven to work
per 100 employees.
Later studies showed a similar pattern. Using a travel behavior survey that included both the cost of parking at
work and commute mode choice to downtown Portland, Hess (2001) developed a model predicting that a sixdollar daily parking charge would reduce drive-alone commuting by 16 percentage points and carpooling by 12
percentage points, while increasing transit commuting by 28 percentage points. The model also predicted that for
every 100 commuters, 21 would stop driving alone to work, reducing annual vehicle travel by 39,000 miles. More
recently, Ding and Manville (2025) found that, all else equal, free parking at work in California was associated with
10.4 more daily vehicle miles per household.
Other studies examine the combined impact of parking charges, transit subsidies, and other incentives to shift
modes. Bianco (2000) studied actual changes in commuting after the city installed parking meters and provided
discounted transit passes to some employees in downtown Portland’s Lloyd District. Even though only free street
parking was reduced, long-term meters charged only $0.35/hour, and many employees continued to park free at
work, drive alone commuting decreased 7%. Hamre and Buehler (2014) studied how free workplace parking and
other transportation benefits — such as public transit subsidies, shower and locker facilities, and secure bike
parking — affected commuting in Washington, D.C. Their analysis found that employees who received free
parking but no other benefits would be 20 percentage points more likely to drive alone than those who received
no benefits of any kind. In contrast, employees who received public transportation and bike/walk benefits — but
no free car parking — would be 50 percentage points less likely to drive alone than those with no benefits.
Notably, offering free parking alongside walking, biking, or transit incentives largely negated the effect of those
other benefits.
A study in Norway found that employees with free parking at work were more likely to drive than those without any
employer-managed workplace parking: four times more likely when the free parking was plentiful, and twice as
likely when it was limited. When workplace parking was available, requiring employees to pay for it reduced the
odds of driving to work by 11–30% (Christiansen et al., 2017).
The studies discussed above mainly compare free versus paid parking. Related research examines how
employees respond when given the option to receive the cash value of a parking subsidy instead of a free space.
In California, state law requires large employers who rent parking spaces for their employees to give them this
cash-out option. Shoup (1997) studied eight firms that implemented the policy and found that the number of solo
drivers decreased 17%, the number of carpoolers increased 64%, transit ridership rose by 50%, and walking and
biking increased by 39%. Vehicle miles traveled fell by 12%.
Table 4 summarizes the key findings. Findings vary based on the sample, price of parking, and study
methodology, but the general pattern is clear: free workplace parking increases driving and undermines transit.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

While this section focuses primarily on empirical research, modeling studies reach similar conclusions (e.g.,
Abou-Zeid et al. 2023; Brueckner & Franco, 2018).
Table 4. Research Linking Workplace Parking Benefits to Commuting Behavior
Study

Location/Sample

Key Findings

Shoup, 1995

7 case studies, U.S. and
Canada

Driver-paid parking decreased drive-alone commuting 25
percentage points, and 19 fewer cars were driven to work per
100 employees.

Hess, 2001

Downtown Portland

The model predicted that a $6 daily parking charge would reduce
drive-alone commuting by 16 percentage points and carpooling
by 12 percentage points, increasing transit commuting by 28
percentage points.

Bianco, 2000

Lloyd District, Downtown
Portland

Installing parking meters ($0.35/hour) and offering some
employees discounted transit passes decreased drive-alone
commuting by 7%.

Ding &
California (California
Manville, 2025 Household Travel Survey +
American Housing Survey)

Free parking at work was associated with 10.4 more daily vehicle
miles traveled per household.

Hamre &
Buehler, 2014

Washington D.C. urban core Employees who received free parking but no other transportation
and inner suburbs
benefits were 20 percentage points more likely to drive alone
than those who received no benefits. Free car parking also
largely offset effects of public transportation benefits, lockers and
showers, and secure bike parking.

Christiansen
et al., 2017

Norway

Employees with employer-paid parking at work were 2–4x more
likely to drive than those without any employer-managed parking
at work. Requiring employees to pay for parking reduced the
odds of driving to work by 11–30%.

Shoup, 1997

8 California firms

When employees were offered the equivalent cash value in-lieu
of free work parking, the number of solo drivers decreased 17%,
the number of carpoolers increased 64%, transit ridership rose
by 50%, and walking and biking increased by 39%.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Higher Citywide Parking Supplies Increase Driving
Most studies focus on either residential or workplace parking, but a smaller body of research examines the
relationship between area-wide or citywide parking and travel behavior. Parking is more likely to be priced where
its supply is limited, and such places also tend to have lower levels of car ownership, as discussed earlier. Urban
economics models (e.g. Franco 2017) predict that higher downtown parking supply will lower the costs of driving,
leading to higher rates of auto commuting, and empirical work generally confirms these predictions. However, as
the authors of the below-mentioned studies note, their studies show correlations rather than proving a causal
relationship between higher areawide parking supply and increased auto commuting. Cities with more parking are
also likely to have other characteristics that encourage driving, and it is challenging to control for differences such
as economic development trajectories.
McCahill and Garrick (2010) examined parking supply and commuting behavior over time in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut — two cities that had similar shares of transit commuters in the 1960s
before their approaches to parking and transportation diverged. Between 1960 and 2007, Hartford’s parking
supply per worker grew by 194%, while Cambridge’s increased by only 20%. Over the same period, the share of
drive-alone commuters in Hartford rose from 53% to 73%, while in Cambridge it fell from 42% to 38%.
Hartford and Cambridge were also included in three subsequent studies that expanded the analysis to additional
cities and further solidified the connection between parking supply and driving. Across nine medium-sized U.S.
cities, an increase in citywide parking provision from 0.1 to 0.5 parking spaces per resident or employee was
associated with an increase in automobile commute mode share of roughly 30 percentage points (McCahill et al.,
2016). In a later study, McCahill et al. (2019) tracked changes in parking supply between 1960 and 2000 for six
cities. In the three cities with the highest minimum parking requirements, parking supply ratios increased by
221%, on average, and the share of commuters driving to work rose, on average, by 31%. In contrast, in the three
cities with lower parking requirements, parking supply ratios decreased by 26%, on average, and the share of
commuters who drove to work decreased, on average, by 4%. An earlier study by the same authors found that
differences in parking supplies explained 70% of the variation in automobile commuting across 12 cities (McCahill
& Garrick, 2012).

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Parking Oversupply and the Role of
Minimum Parking Requirements
Parking Oversupply
Parking is often oversupplied. Research finds that parking typically occupies between 5% and 14% of urban
land and that the supply exceeds what drivers actually use, across many cities and building types. Studies that
measure occupancy reveal large numbers of empty spaces, even during the busiest hours, and even when most
parking is free to drivers. Other studies highlight indirect signs of oversupply, such as garages repurposed for
non-vehicle uses, or the share of car-free households with a bundled parking space. Taken together, these
studies provide clear evidence that parking is frequently overbuilt and consumes a needlessly large share of
urban land.
Researchers and planners commonly use the term “oversupply” for situations where a lot or garage is rarely or
never fully occupied, even when parking is offered for free, and that is how this section uses the term. However,
from an economic perspective, oversupply can still occur if the marginal costs of a space exceed its marginal
benefits, regardless of peak occupancy.

A Substantial Share of Land Is Devoted to Parking
Measuring the share of land devoted to parking is challenging; there is no single accepted approach. Estimates
vary by whether researchers include only surface lots or also driveways, garages, and on-street spaces. Using
comparable methods (combining minimum parking requirement data, assessor data, and curb data) accounting
for both on-street and off-street parking, studies in Los Angeles County, the Phoenix metropolitan area, and the
San Francisco Bay Area found that parking occupied roughly 14%, 10%, and 8%, respectively, of the
incorporated land area (Chester et al., 2015; Hoehne et al., 2022; Li et al., 2022). Some locations had
considerably more; for example, in the Bay Area, parking covered roughly 44% of downtown Burlingame, 40% of
downtown Walnut Creek, and 40% of industrial zones in Concord (Li et al., 2022).
Gabbe et al. (2021) analyzed the share of land devoted to parking in the seven most productive cities in Santa
Clara County, California, the region otherwise known as Silicon Valley. They estimated that 13% of the land area
was devoted to parking, including more than half of the average commercial parcel. They also noted that about
90% of housing units in Silicon Valley include a bundled parking space, compared with just 70% in San Francisco
and under 30% in New York City and Boston, where more development predates minimum parking requirements.
One common method uses aerial images to quantify parking supply. In four Upper Great Lakes states,
researchers estimated that parking lots cover roughly 5% of urban land; in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, the figure
is about 7%, counting only lots with at least four spaces and excluding driveways, garages, and street parking
(Davis et al., 2010b; Davis et al., 2010a). Consistent with other research, for Upper Great Lakes states, parking
lot coverage was greatest near urban centers (Davis et al., 2010b). Recent work applies machine learning tools to
satellite imagery to quantify land devoted to off-street parking, which can scale up estimates to many more cities
than possible with manual counts. Notably, Qiam and Lehe (2025) estimate parking as a share of taxable parcel
land rather than of total incorporated land area. Analyzing 15 cities, they found that the share of parcel land
dedicated to off-street surface parking ranged from 3 to 11% citywide and from 2 to 32% within central business

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

districts. Unlike other studies, which often include the top level of parking garages when calculating parking area,
their analysis counted only surface parking. Table 5 displays the results from these parking coverage studies.
The Parking Reform Network (2025a) has also used aerial photographs to map the parking coverage, including
surface parking and above ground garages, for dozens of “central cities” across the United States. The
boundaries used for these central cities largely correspond to zoning districts, such as central business districts,
with some adjustments based on prominent physical or infrastructural features, such as rivers or highways. In
cities with urbanized areas exceeding 500,000 residents, parking occupied a median of 26% of land in the central
city. Rapidly growing cities tend to have less surface parking than cities with stable or declining populations.
Figure 7 on page 33 shows an aerial photograph of the “central city” in Anchorage, Alaska, where parking
occupies 34% of land.
While parking infrastructure reduces the space available for all other potential uses, several studies have directly
compared the land area devoted to parking with the land area devoted to parks and green space within a region.
For example, Brown (2007) estimated that the land required to store San Francisco’s automobiles covers an area
equivalent to three and a half Golden Gate Parks. Similarly, Davis et al. (2010a) found that in Tippecanoe County,
Indiana, urban parking lots, which were mostly empty, occupied three times more land than urban parks. They
calculated that converting these parking areas to wetlands would increase the ecosystem service value (an
estimate of the benefits humans derive from natural ecosystems) by $22.5 million.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Table 5. Studies Estimating Share of Land Devoted to Parking Infrastructure
Study

Location

Area of Analysis

All incorporated land
area

Parking Type(s) Included

Area-wide

Central
Business
District

14%

N/A

Chester et
al., 2015

Los Angeles County

Hoehne et
al., 2022

Phoenix metropolitan
area

10%

Li et al.,
2022

San Francisco Bay Area

8%

Gabbe et
al., 2021

Silicon Valley (7 most
Commercial, industrial,
productive cities in Santa and multifamily
Clara County, CA)
residential parcels

Off-street parking

13%

Davis et al.,
2010a

Tippecanoe County,
Indiana

Off-street lots with at least
four spaces

7%

Davis et al.,
2010b

Illinois, Indiana,
Michigan, and Wisconsin

Qiam &
Lehe, 2025

Anaheim

Urban areas

On-street and off-street
parking

Coverage Rate Estimate

5%
11%

10%

6%

19%

Boston

5%

2%

Chicago

6%

3%

Dallas

8%

21%

Indianapolis

7%

20%

Los Angeles

6%

22%

Memphis

7%

18%

Minneapolis

7%

14%

Oakland

3%

10%

Phoenix

8%

16%

Riverside

6%

14%

San Diego

5%

9%

Seattle

5%

8%

Tulsa

7%

32%

Atlanta

Taxable parcel land

Off-street surface parking
(excludes land covered by a
parking garage)

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Figure 7. Share of the “Central City” Devoted to Off-Street Parking in Anchorage, Alaska

Source: Parking Reform Network, 2025a. Used with permission.

Many Parking Spaces Go Unused, even at the Busiest Times
Numerous surveys across different building types have shown that, even though parking is generally free to
drivers, much of it sits empty. These studies are relatively straightforward. Some studies in residential areas look
at vehicle ownership data relative to parking supply; other studies use manual counts of vehicles relative to
spaces. The evidence consistently shows an oversupply of off-street parking.
For example, Smith (2013) surveyed 13 shopping centers along transit routes in San Jose, California, and found
that on a December Saturday at noon, one of the busiest times of the year, their parking lots were only between
29–78% occupied. Likewise, Willson (1995) found that five suburban office buildings in Southern California
devoted 60% of their parcel land to parking, and those spaces were, on average across buildings, only 56%
occupied. Weinberger and Karlin-Resnick (2015) reviewed parking studies from 27 mixed-use districts across the
country. Using a conservative benchmark that “sufficient supply” would leave 15% of spaces available, they found
that, on average, the districts had 65% more parking than necessary. Even in areas that identified parking
shortages, supply exceeded demand by an average of 45%.
Several studies examining the environmental impacts of parking lots have also noted widespread underuse. In a
study of the impact of parking lots on local streams in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, researchers noted that most
parking lots were less than half full at peak hours (Albanese & Matlack, 1998). In a study centered on stormwater
runoff and the lost potential for parks and wetlands, researchers noted that parking lots across Tippecanoe
County, Indiana, were only 28% full overall (Davis, et al., 2010a).
Residential parking, too, tends to be oversupplied, even where cities grant parking reductions for transit proximity
or affordable housing. For example, Rowe et al. (2011) examined four buildings near downtown Seattle and found
that while the average parking supply was 0.74 spaces per unit, residents owned only 0.52 vehicles per unit.
Ewing et al. (2019) compiled results from seven transit-oriented developments and found that the actual number

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

of cars parked at peak hours was, on average, only 36% of the ITE parking generation rate and only 63% of the
site’s actual supply. Similarly, Cervero et al. (2010) surveyed 31 multifamily housing complexes near rail stations
and found that parking supply exceeded peak demand by an average of 37%, which translates to 73%
occupancy. Willson (2012) surveyed 21 affordable housing sites in San Diego, where parking requirements
ranged from 1.00 to 2.25 spaces per unit. On average, affordable housing residents owned only 0.68 vehicles per
household, and observed overnight occupancy was 0.53 vehicles per occupied apartment.
Additional evidence similarly points to an oversupply of residential off-street parking: many garages serve nonparking uses, many zero-vehicle households still receive a bundled private parking space, and residential streets
often have many empty curb parking spaces.
In the New York City region, fewer than 13% of garage owners parked in their garage (Guo, 2013b). In
Sacramento, 63% of garage owners used their garage at least partially for parking, and studies from cities in the
United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia report garage-use rates that fall between these two cases
(Volker & Thigpen, 2022). In the United States, 73% of renter households without a car still have a bundled
parking space included with their rent, and in Australia, 65% of carless households have a bundled off-street
space (Gabbe & Pierce, 2017; De Gruyter et al., 2025). In Davis, California, only 29% of curb spaces in
residential areas were occupied during peak overnight hours (Thigpen & Volker, 2017). In Sacramento, California,
single family households have, on average, 1.6 more available parking spaces than cars (Volker & Thigpen,
2022). Overall, these data reveal widespread underuse of parking spaces, suggesting that most buildings supply
far more parking than necessary.
Table 6 displays the key findings from parking use studies.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Table 6. Parking Use Studies
Study

Location

Study Focus

Result

Smith, 2013

San Jose, California

Off-street parking for 13
shopping centers along
transit routes

29 to 78% full

Willson, 1995

Suburban Southern
California

Off-street parking for 5 office 56% full
buildings

Weinberger &
Karlin-Resnick,
2015

Various, across the
United States

Mixed use districts off-street 65% more parking than necessary;
parking
45% more in areas with perceived
parking shortages

Albanese &
Matlack, 1998

Hattiesburg,
Mississippi

Parking lots near local
watersheds

Less than 50% full

Davis et al., 2010a Tippecanoe County,
Indiana

Off-street parking lots

28% full

Rowe et al., 2011

Seattle, Washington

Off-street parking for
downtown apartments

Car ownership was 70% of parking
supply

Ewing et al., 2019

Various, across the
United States

Off-street parking for transit- 63% full
oriented developments

Cervero et al.,
2010

San Francisco Bay
Area and Portland,
Oregon

Off-street parking for
apartments near suburban
rail stations

73% full

Willson, 2012

San Diego, California

Off-street parking for
affordable housing
developments

Average 0.53 occupied spaces per
unit, while parking requirements
ranged from 1 to 2.25

Guo, 2013b

New York City region

Residential garages

Under 13% of garages were used
for parking

Gabbe & Pierce,
2017

United States

Residential off-street

73% of zero-vehicle renter
households have bundled parking

De Gruyter et al.,
2025

Australia

Residential off-street

65% of zero-vehicle households
have bundled parking

Thigpen & Volker,
2017

Davis, California

Residential on-street

29% full

Volker & Thigpen,
2022

Sacramento, California Single family residential onstreet and off-street

63% of garages were used at least
partially for parking
Households have 1.6 more available
parking spaces than cars

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

The Role of Minimum Parking Requirements
Binding minimum parking requirements help explain the oversupply of parking. Developers face clear
incentives to align how much parking they provide with individual project needs. Minimum parking requirements
are considered binding when they require more than developers would supply voluntarily. If a developer already
plans to provide as much or more parking than the city requires, the parking requirement would not be binding for
that project. For example, if a city required a minimum of 40 parking spaces for a 10,000-square-foot office
building, the requirement would be binding for a developer who would have preferred to build just 30 spaces, but
non-binding for a developer who wanted to build 50 spaces. When binding, minimum parking requirements can
contribute to the oversupply of parking and high prevalence of empty spaces documented above.
The degree to which parking requirements bind is hard to explicitly measure. Researchers cannot directly observe
the counterfactual — the number of spaces that developers would have provided in the absence of parking
requirements. However, they can assess whether the requirements are binding in several ways: by comparing
actual parking provision with mandated minimums, by comparing the cost of providing parking with the value it
generates, by observing developers’ attempts to seek variances and evade requirements, and by studying how
much parking is built after parking minimums are repealed. For each development, minimum parking
requirements are either binding or non-binding; by examining many projects, researchers can quantify the share
of projects constrained by minimums. Whether a requirement is binding depends both on its stringency (higher
requirements are more often binding) and on how much parking developers and their lenders believe is most
profitable for a given use in a particular urban context. Evidence shows that minimum parking requirements are
binding in many cases — particularly in areas with excess parking, good transit access, or higher construction
costs — though not all.

Developers Sometimes Supply Exactly the Minimum Parking Required
When developers build exactly to the minimum, or even slightly above it, this suggests, but does not prove, that
the requirements are binding. Constructing exactly the required amount implies that the minimum parking
requirement dictated a developer’s decision, although it is possible the developer would have provided precisely
the same amount voluntarily. Similarly, when developers build just a few spaces more than required, they are
often just finishing an already-required level of structured parking. For example, if a city requires 50 spaces and
the site accommodates 28 spaces per level, developers may build two levels for a total of 56 spaces. Even when
the total slightly exceeds the requirement, the mandate may still be binding if it prompted the developer to
construct two levels instead of one.
Sometimes, cities grant variances or exemptions that allow developers to provide less parking than the zoning
code requires. This indicates that minimums would bind if the city enforced them strictly, but in practice, the city
applies them more flexibly than the zoning code specifies.
With a large sample of developments, the extent to which parking ratios cluster near the minimum allows
researchers to estimate the share of projects for which minimum parking requirements are binding, as illustrated
in Figure 8. In the Figure’s hypothetical example, researchers might report that minimum parking requirements
were binding for 50 of the 70 developments in the sample (about 71%): 30 met the minimum exactly, 15 built just
above it, and 5 built below the requirement. Others might exclude the developments that built slightly more (or
less) parking than mandated and report the minimum parking requirement as binding for 30 of the 70 projects.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Figure 8. Assessing the Extent to Which Minimum Parking Requirements Are Binding

Cutter and Franco (2012) compared actual parking provision with minimum requirements for various commercial
developments in Los Angeles. They found that minimum parking requirements equaled (or exceeded) the number
of spaces provided, and thus were likely binding, for 65% of office developments and 63% of industrial projects.
Their study suggested that reducing minimum parking requirements for office buildings to the lowest requirement
in Los Angeles County could have resulted in 50 acres less parking, or 6,226 fewer spaces, for the 249 office
developments in their sample area. Engel-Yan et al. (2007) looked at parking provision in Toronto, Canada and
found that minimum parking requirements were most likely to bind for general office, medical office, and general
retail uses, and least likely to bind for banks and large grocery stores.
Gabbe (2017) found that minimum parking requirements were binding for many housing developments near rail
stations in Los Angeles. On average, buildings in the Vermont/Western transit-oriented development area
provided 94% of the required parking, and buildings in Koreatown provided 88%. In Koreatown, the minimums
appeared to be binding for all building types. In the Vermont/Western area, developers of condominiums, marketrate housing, and mixed-income housing voluntarily provided more parking than required, while affordable
housing and mixed-use buildings often secured variances or other exemptions that allowed them to build parking
below the minimum.
In Seattle, a minimum parking requirement of 0.5 spaces per unit appeared to be binding for 88% of the
development projects studied, while 12% supplied more parking than required (Gabbe et al., 2020). A

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

requirement of 1 space per unit may have been binding for all 168 housing projects studied, since 68% provided
exactly the minimum, and 32% provided less. In London, a minimum parking requirement of 1.1 spaces per unit
was binding for 74% of developments, with 26% providing more parking than required (Guo & Ren, 2012).
McDonnell et al. (2011) examined 38 market-rate housing developments in the Queens borough of New York
City. Most buildings provided either exactly the minimum required parking or just one to four spaces above it, as if
completing a level of structured parking. Five provided significantly more than required, while four buildings used
a variance or waiver to supply parking below the minimum.
Manville et al. (2013) noted that even in New York City, where parking requirements are relatively low, many
developers attempt to evade them. Willson (2000) surveyed city planners, who also reported that developers
frequently sought reductions in parking requirements. Such attempts to evade minimum parking requirements
provide further evidence that the requirements are often binding, unless the exemptions or waivers are readily
granted to any developer on request.

The Cost of Additional Parking Often Exceeds Its Value
In addition to directly comparing how much parking cities required with how much was built, Cutter and Franco
(2012) developed a model showing that the average marginal cost of parking (land plus construction) exceeded
its marginal value by about $21 per square foot. They estimated the value of parking using property sales data
and considered minimum parking requirements to be binding in cases where the cost significantly exceeded the
value. The model results closely matched their direct comparisons between actual parking provision and
requirements, yielding similar estimates of how often parking minimums were binding for office buildings and
industrial sites. The model suggested that minimums were binding for 82% of commercial properties in Los
Angeles County, including approximately 98% of service retail properties and 19% of shopping retail properties.

When Requirements Are Lifted or Reduced, Developers Often Build Less Parking
Research on cities that have eliminated minimum parking requirements provides useful insight into how much the
old requirements actually influenced parking supply. In 9 of the 12 places that have been studied, the old
requirements had clearly been binding overall: the total amount of parking built in new developments was lower
than what would have been required under the former minimums (see Table 7 on page 47), even though many
individual projects still provided parking that met or exceeded the previous standards. In at least three of the
locations where minimums had been binding, researchers found that excess parking already present in an area
led developers to reduce how much new parking they built (Manville, 2013; Sohoni & Lee, 2024; Sohoni & Lee,
2025). Several studies of repeal also found that the old requirements had most often been binding in dense urban
cores, where transit access was better and constructing new parking was more costly (Li & Guo, 2014; Sohoni &
Lee, 2025). However, even within these urban cores, minimums were frequently found to be non-binding for
larger, more expensive apartments, where developers often provided the additional parking deemed necessary to
attract higher-income tenants and maximize profitability (Manville, 2013; Guo & Ren, 2012).
Whether minimum parking requirements were binding depended not only on urban context and project type, but
also on the stringency of the former requirements. For example, although Washington D.C. is an urban area with
good alternatives to driving, its minimum parking requirements were not binding: developers continued to supply
parking well above the previous minimums even after the requirements were removed (Sohoni & Lee, 2025). This
was because the minimum parking requirements were already quite low (for example, just .25 spaces per unit)
and most developers judged that supplying more parking was important for their projects’ success. In Grand
Rapids, Michigan, a lower-density urban area, even a higher minimum of 1 space per unit proved non-binding, as

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

developers continued to provide at least that amount of parking after the requirement was removed (Sohoni &
Lee, 2025).
Comparing actual parking provision with two sets of requirements — a new, reduced standard meant to
encourage housing near transit, and the former, higher standard applied elsewhere — further demonstrates how
stricter requirements are more likely to bind. For example, before California passed state legislation barring cities
from imposing parking minimums near transit, Los Angeles adopted a Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC) policy
to lower (or eliminate, in certain cases) parking requirements for new development near transit. Overall, mixeduse TOC projects built under these more flexible new standards provided almost twice as much parking as
required; however, this provision was still less than what would have been required under the citywide standards
(Smith et al., 2021). The new, lower requirements were not binding; the former requirements would have been.
The report discusses additional findings from post-reform parking supply research beginning on page 46.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Parking Minimums as Constraints on
Development
Minimums prevent the creation of new homes and businesses, undermine density, and reduce land
values. By mandating off-street parking, cities influence not only how space is used, but where and whether new
buildings can be constructed. In some cases, binding off-street parking requirements simply result in more
parking, reducing density by taking space that could otherwise accommodate housing or commercial
development. In other cases, minimum parking requirements can prevent new development altogether. The
evidence, albeit limited, suggests this is especially common at infill sites, where space is constrained and meeting
parking minimums is either physically impossible or would require costly structures or underground excavation. As
a result, developers find infill development less viable and increasingly pursue outlying sites, contributing to
sprawl and leaving central urban areas underdeveloped. Even when developers do build infill housing, they may
downsize projects when additional units would require an entire new level of structured parking. Over time,
restricting the production of new housing also drives up the cost of existing housing in desirable areas, as more
people compete for a limited number of homes.
Parking minimums can decrease housing density, population density, and commercial development density.
Parking minimums may also reduce land values, since parcels restricted by binding minimum parking
requirements are less valuable than those that can be fully developed. The research demonstrating these effects
relies largely on theory, building-prototype models, developer interviews, and small-scale case studies.
Certain topics in this section merit additional study. For instance, only two studies, and only one of them empirical,
investigate how minimum parking requirements decrease land values. Evidence is also scarce on how parking
minimums constrain commercial development, even though many cities are working on the assumption that they
do. In practice, far more jurisdictions have eliminated parking minimums specifically for commercial uses than
have eliminated them for all uses (Parking Reform Network, 2025b).

Parking Minimums Increase the Cost of Construction
Constructing parking adds substantially to development costs. If parking requirements did not exist, developers
could weigh these construction costs against the value of providing on-site parking, and might choose to provide
less parking where it is expensive to build. In the presence of binding minimum requirements, however, higher
construction costs make it less likely that projects can pencil out.
A recent analysis found an average cost (excluding land costs) of approximately $52,000 per space for
aboveground structures and $73,000 per space for underground parking across 17 U.S. cities (see Figure 9;
Schwartz, 2026). The analysis used per-square-foot cost estimates from Rider Levett Bucknall (2025), an
international consulting firm specializing in real estate construction. Parking construction costs have risen faster
than general inflation; after adjusting for inflation, the cost per space has increased by roughly 50 percent since
2012. Parking facilities also have operation and maintenance costs.

40

THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Figure 9. Construction Cost per Structured Parking Space in 17 U.S. Cities

Source: Schwartz, 2026; calculated using cost estimates from Rider Levett Bucknall (2025).
The analysis also examined construction cost data alongside minimum parking requirements for office buildings,
shopping centers, and apartments in seven cities to see how parking mandates affect development costs. For
both office buildings and shopping centers, required parking represented, on average, roughly 39% of total
construction costs when built underground and 31% when provided in an aboveground structure (Schwartz,
2026). Across cities, required parking generally accounted for a larger share of total costs in cities with the highest
mandates.
Minimum parking requirements disproportionately increase the cost of smaller apartments because the required
parking area is larger relative to the housing area provided. For a 450 square foot studio apartment, required
parking represented, on average, 27% of construction costs when built underground and 20% when built
aboveground, compared with 17% and 12%, respectively, for a 1,100 square foot two-bedroom apartment
(Schwartz, 2026).
Shoup (2011) provides two examples of residential developments that separated parking construction costs from
building costs. At UCLA’s Weyburn Terrace apartments, the average construction cost per unit was $139,000.
With 1.7 parking spaces per unit, the average parking cost added $35,000 per apartment, increasing the total cost
by 25%. Had UCLA been subject to the City of Los Angeles’ minimum parking requirements, the required parking
would have added $44,600 per unit, or 32% of total costs.
The percentage increase was larger for affordable single-room occupancy housing in Palo Alto, California, despite
a lower parking requirement. Because the units were very small, construction costs were just $32,000 per
apartment. Even with a reduced requirement of 0.67 spaces per apartment, required parking added $12,100 per

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

unit, increasing total costs by 38%. If the building had been subject to Palo Alto’s standard requirement of 1.25
spaces per apartment, total costs would have increased by 71%.

Parking Minimums Reduce Housing Development
Few researchers examined the impacts of minimum parking requirements when they were first adopted. The only
known before-and-after study looked at housing development in Oakland, California before and after the city
introduced parking requirements in 1961 (Bertha, 1964). Apartments built in the preceding years included roughly
0.6 parking spaces per unit. After Oakland began requiring 1.0 off-street space per apartment, per-unit
construction costs increased 18%, and median profitability fell by 25%, suggesting consumers did not value the
additional off-street parking enough for developers to fully recover its cost. Total housing investment per acre also
fell by 18%. Off-street parking requirements constrained housing development at the margin, driving out
developers who had previously profited from smaller-scale, lower-cost projects. The median lot size of new
development increased 15%, as smaller lots became more likely to go undeveloped.

Parcels and Buildings Remain Vacant When Parking Requirements Prevent New Uses
Minimum parking requirements can make small or irregularly shaped parcels effectively undevelopable, by
mandating more parking than can physically fit on a site. Requirements especially hinder infill development and
adaptive reuse in already built-up areas. When changing the use of an existing building would require additional
parking, developers may sometimes acquire adjacent parcels and demolish existing structures to create the
necessary spaces, but when this is not feasible, vacant buildings cannot support new uses. Recognizing this
challenge, the City of Los Angeles selectively lifted parking minimums in 1999 as part of an Adaptive Reuse
Ordinance designed to facilitate the conversion of vacant buildings into housing. The policy enabled the
construction of 6,500 new units downtown — more housing in less than a decade than had been built in the
previous thirty years (Manville, 2013).
Shoup (2011) further illustrates this idea with an example: a vacant building formerly used as a furniture store,
which had met its requirement of 1 parking space per 1,000 square feet, could not be reused by a bicycle shop
with a parking requirement of 3 spaces per 1,000 square feet. Dense, transit-rich neighborhoods offer the greatest
potential for infill development and building reuse. However, developer interviews reveal the challenge that
parking requirements pose in such places: when surveyed, 21 of 24 developers cited parking requirements as an
obstacle to constructing compact, walkable development in transit-rich areas (Guthrie & Fan, 2016).
Parking requirements also create obstacles for homeowners who want to build accessory dwelling units (ADUs),
including by converting garages into living space (Infranca, 2014; Brown et al., 2017). Garage conversions can
create affordable housing in desirable neighborhoods, improve urban design, help homeowners cover mortgage
payments, and allow seniors to age in place (Brown et al. 2017). While it is not always physically possible to
accommodate both an ADU and the off-street parking it would require, research suggests there is strong demand
for this type of housing. Many homeowners have built units without permits or in violation of local regulations.
Brown et al. (2017) compared census data with building permit records and found that 37% of new single-family
units were unpermitted, with higher shares occurring in cities with more regulatory barriers.
Research on California ADU regulations and outcomes found that cities receiving more frequent ADU applications
were less likely to impose parking requirements (Pfeiffer, 2019). Beginning in 2016, California passed multiple
bills reducing regulatory barriers to ADU construction, including limiting cities’ ability to require parking for these
units. As a result, between 2016 and 2022, statewide annual ADU permitting increased 15,334%, for a total of
83,865 new units (Gray, 2024). Infranca (2014) documented regulatory challenges to both ADUs and micro-units

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

across a geographically diverse set of cities, as well as the rising number of one-person households and the
mismatch between housing needs and housing supply. He suggested that reducing barriers to creating
appropriately sized units could give individuals the option to live independently and free up larger apartments for
families.

Parking Minimums Result in Fewer Apartments per Building
Even if parking requirements do not prevent development altogether, they can still shape what gets built.
Developers often choose to provide above-ground parking because it costs less than underground parking.
However, above-ground parking consumes valuable space that could otherwise be used for housing, reducing the
potential number of apartments on a site (McDonnell et al., 2011). Evidence from Oakland shows that after the
city introduced minimum parking requirements, the median number of units per development fell by 36%, even
though higher densities remained allowable on paper (Bertha, 1964). Consistent with this finding, most planners
surveyed reported that, in their experience, minimum parking requirements reduced project densities (Willson,
2000).
Parking requirements further limit housing supply by encouraging developers to build larger, higher-end
apartments rather than a greater number of smaller units. Lehe (2018) modeled how parking requirements
discourage small units by making it illegal to build them without parking. Smaller units built for lower-income
households would have been profitable without mandatory parking, but once a city requires it, developers find it
more profitable to instead build larger apartments for higher-income households who would pay for the parking
even if it were optional. Gabbe (2015) used two prototype buildings to show how minimum parking requirements
prevented micro-apartments from being built in San Francisco and cited a developer who explained that the rents
needed to recoup parking costs for small units would be unaffordable to the potential tenants.
Even when developers would like to build the maximum number of units, minimum parking requirements can lead
them to scale back slightly, particularly when the last apartment(s) added would require an entire new level of
costly structured parking. For example, one Los Angeles developer reduced a project from eight apartments to
seven, because the strict parking requirement of 2.25 spaces per unit would have required two spaces more than
could fit on a single underground level (Shoup, 2014). The parking associated with that last unit was as a result
wildly expensive. Figure 10 illustrates this example.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Figure 10. How Parking Minimums Can Increase Marginal Costs and Decrease Unit Counts

Parking Minimums Reduce Population Density
Manville et al. (2013) studied the link between parking and density at a larger scale, in New York City and Los
Angeles. Both across and within the two regions, differences in density reflected differences in residential parking
supply, which was greater where parking requirements were higher. Within New York City, a 10% increase in
minimum parking requirements was associated with a 6% reduction in both housing density and population
density.

Parking Minimums Decrease Commercial Development Density
Required parking also undermines commercial density, consuming valuable land that could otherwise support
buildings. Willson (1995) estimated that decreasing parking requirements for offices in Southern California from
3.8 to 2.5 spaces per 1000 square feet would allow a 42% increase in the size of the office buildings. In Silicon
Valley, researchers found that minimum parking requirements were binding and that parking occupied more than
half of the average commercial parcel (Gabbe et al., 2021). Figure 11 on page 45 demonstrates how this can
occur: when developers provide the required parking as a surface lot, a mandate of 4 parking spaces per 1,000
square feet requires about 1,300 square feet of parking for every 1,000 square feet of building, limiting building
space to 43% of a parcel’s developable area.
By limiting development density, minimum parking requirements constrain agglomeration economies and impose
large opportunity costs. Researchers estimated that if Silicon Valley had halved its parking requirements in 2000,
the already-successful region could have added 13,000 jobs — a 37% increase over actual job growth — and
generated more than one billion dollars in additional annual payroll (Gabbe et al., 2021).

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Figure 11. How Minimum Parking Requirements Limit Commercial Development Space

Parking Requirements Reduce Land Values
Land becomes less valuable when owners cannot develop it as they wish (or would need to build costly
underground parking to do so), and parking areas are generally less valuable than buildings. Willson (1995)
estimated the impacts of parking requirements for office buildings. His findings imply that increasing parking
requirements for offices in Southern California from 2.5 to 3.8 spaces per 1000 square feet would reduce land
values by 32%. Bertha (1964) found that land values fell by 33% after Oakland established a parking requirement
of one space per apartment. Blanc et al. (2014) also indirectly support the idea that minimum parking
requirements reduce land values, finding that, across central business districts in six cities, surface parking
generated less property tax revenue than buildings.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Effects of Repealing Minimums
Parking Supply Effects
Eliminating minimums sometimes slows the growth of new parking supply. An increasing number of cities
have eliminated minimum parking requirements in recent years, either citywide or for specific areas or land uses.
In several cases, enough time has passed for researchers to observe the early effects of these reforms.
Researchers often compare how much parking developers build after reforms with the amount previous
minimums would have required.
The scope of repeal differs across study locations (see Table 7 on page 47). In three of the twelve cases, cities
eliminated parking minimums citywide. In eight of the twelve cases, cities eliminated minimums only in specific
subareas, such as transit-rich neighborhoods, a central business district, or a university district. One study
examined a targeted repeal for adaptive reuse projects downtown.
Eliminating parking requirements does not eliminate parking. Across all studies, most new developments still
include parking even after cities eliminate parking requirements. In most cases, new projects include less than
previously required; in others, they provide more. Even in locations where less parking was provided overall, the
average reductions sometimes mask substantial variation. Eliminating parking minimums reveals that the
requirements had been more binding for certain project types or locations than others.
When considering the results from multiple studies together, patterns emerge in how developers respond to
repeal for different project types. Developers often continue to build parking at or above former minimums for
luxury housing in central areas, but reduce parking in mixed-use projects, dense areas near transit, and locations
where nearby parking can meet demand. More research across a broader set of locations and building types,
particularly non-residential buildings, could help confirm these initial patterns.
Overall, early research shows that when cities eliminate minimum parking requirements, developers often build
less parking, but the effects are far from uniform. Because most repeals are still fairly recent, it will take time for
developers to fully adjust their practices and for researchers to observe longer-term effects.

Eliminating Minimums Has Generally — But Not Always — Curbed Parking Growth
Research examining new developments after cities fully or partially eliminate parking requirements shows how
much parking developers provide relative to the former minimums. Among 12 cities or areas analyzed, nine saw a
decline in new parking supply relative to the former minimums, while three saw an increase. Table 7 presents the
overall results for each of the 12 reform locations. In a few cases, due to variances and reductions, the average
parking provision for new developments had already been below the minimum even before minimums were
eliminated; even so, projects developed after repeal had lower parking ratios than projects developed before it.
The magnitude of the reductions reflects how binding the former minimums were. In the three locations where
post-reform projects supplied more parking than previously required, the old minimums were evidently low
enough not to influence most developers’ decisions. In contrast, when developers build less parking, their choices
reflect market conditions and local contexts where doing so is feasible and profitable.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Table 7. Studies of Post-Elimination Parking Provision Compared to Former Minimums
Study

Location

Repeal Scope
at Time of
Study

Development
Type

Approximate New OnSite Parking
(vs. prior
requirements)

Developments
Providing On-Site
Parking

Developments
Providing Parking
Below the Previous
Minimum

Guo & Ren,
2012

London, UK

Citywide

Residential

48% lessa

75%

83%

Hess & Rehler,
2021

Buffalo, NY

Citywide

All

21% less

83%

47%

Sohoni & Lee,
2024

Champaign,
IL

Downtown and
University
District

Residential

54% less

81%

84%

Manville, 2013

Los
Adaptive
Angeles, CA Reuse

Residential

45% less

67%

N/A

Gabbe et al.,
2020

Seattle, WA

Urban Center;
Urban Villages
Near Transit

Residential

40% lessb

70%

Sohoni & Lee,
2025

San
Francisco,
CA

Citywide

Residential

70% less

55%

Sohoni & Lee,
2025

Cincinnati,
OHc

Central
Business
District

Residential

75% less

25%

Sohoni & Lee,
2025

Honolulu, HI Near Transit

Residential

25% less

N/A

Sohoni & Lee,
2025

Somerville,
MA

Residential

68% less

Sohoni & Lee,
2025

Washington, Central
D.C.
Business
District

Residential

139% more

Sohoni & Lee,
2025

Grand
Rapids, MI

Central
Business
District

Residential

23% more

Nelson et al.,
1997

Atlanta, GA

Near Transit

Commercial

5% more

Near Transit

Note.
aLondon also established parking maximums, but researchers found that they explained only 2% of the decline in new parking
supply; 98% stemmed from eliminating minimums.
bThe Seattle included 868 developments: 570 with the minimum parking requirement fully eliminated, 130 with the minimum
parking requirement reduced to 0.5 spaces per unit, and 168 with the minimum parking requirement reduced to 1.0 spaces per
unit. Without these remaining requirements, the observed reduction in parking supply may have been slightly larger.
cCincinnati had a small sample size, with only eight new developments built in the eight years following minimum parking
requirements being eliminated.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Some studies also reported the share of new developments that provided parking below the previous minimums
or the share that did not provide any on-site parking. In Champaign, 84% of new developments provided less
parking than the city previously required; in London, 83%; and in Buffalo, 47% (Sohoni & Lee, 2024; Guo & Ren,
2012; Hess & Rehler, 2021). However, while developers often built less parking than formerly required, most new
developments still provided parking. One exception was Cincinnati’s Central Business District, where ample
public parking was available, and six out of eight new developments provided no on-site parking (Sohoni & Lee,
2025). In San Francisco, 45% of developments provided no on-site parking, compared with 30% in Seattle, 25%
in London, 19% in Champaign, 17% in Buffalo, and roughly 33% of buildings created under Los Angeles’s
Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (Sohoni & Lee, 2025; Gabbe et al., 2020; Guo & Ren, 2012; Sohoni & Lee, 2024;
Hess & Rehler, 2021; Manville, 2013). These findings suggest that developers may be more likely to reduce
parking more in dense urban areas with access to transit, a finding that also holds true within individual cities, as
discussed in the next section.
Some researchers have translated parking supply reductions into construction cost savings. Sohoni and Lee
(2024) estimated $43 to $49 million in construction cost savings across 43 new developments after Champaign
eliminated minimums in targeted areas. Gabbe et al. (2020) estimated a savings of $537 million in direct
construction costs over five years after Seattle’s parking reform.

Developers Were More Likely to Use Parking Flexibility in Dense Areas Near Transit and
for Mixed-Use Projects
Research suggests that mixed-use projects and developments in dense areas near transit are more likely to take
advantage of the new flexibility when parking minimums are lifted. By serving multiple uses with different peak
demand times, mixed-use projects can benefit from shared parking. After Buffalo eliminated parking minimums,
mixed-use projects provided 53% less parking, driving the overall citywide decrease in new supply, even as
residential and commercial projects continued to exceed old requirements (Hess & Rehler, 2021). In Champaign,
both residential and mixed-use projects reduced their parking provision, but mixed-use projects saw greater
reductions — providing, on average, 33% of what the city formerly required, compared with 43% for residential
projects (Sohoni & Lee, 2024). Similarly, across four cities that eliminated minimum parking requirements in their
Central Business Districts, mixed-use projects provided less parking than entirely residential projects (Sohoni &
Lee, 2025).
Overall, the research suggests that when cities eliminate minimums, developments tend to include less parking in
areas with better alternatives to driving (e.g., in neighborhoods with high-quality transit and an abundance of
shops and services within walking distance). For example, London’s overall decrease in new parking supply was
largely driven by declines in inner London, where new developments provided 67% fewer spaces than
comparable projects before the reform, while to average reduction in outer London was just 32% (Li & Guo,
2014). After San Francisco and Buffalo eliminated requirements citywide, reductions in new parking provision
within their core areas were 1.5 to 1.9 times greater than in other parts of the cities (Sohoni & Lee, 2025). Across
Buffalo, Hartford, and San Francisco, developments near transit saw an average reduction of 10 spaces after
minimum parking requirements were removed citywide (Sohoni & Lee, 2025). More research could help clarify
whether developers build less parking primarily because of nearby transit access itself or because dense urban
environments make parking more difficult and expensive to construct.
In Buffalo, most new residential developments still provided parking above the old minimums, but one mixed-use
development that did leverage the new flexibility was located near two metro rail stops and within a two-block

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

radius of eight bus stops. The development included a small grocery store with its own parking lot and 201
affordable housing units (Figure 12). The developer-owner offered residents and grocery store employees a range
of mobility benefits, including a guaranteed ride home program and discounts to the local bike shop (Hess &
Flowers, 2023).
Figure 12. Grocery Market and Affordable Multifamily Apartment Building in Buffalo

The project took advantage of the city’s elimination of minimum parking requirements to build 201 affordable
apartments. Source: Photo taken by André Carrotflower on July 23, 2021, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed
under CC BY-SA 4.0. Image License: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.

Developers Were Less Likely to Reduce Parking for Luxury Housing in Central Areas
Developers often provide less parking in mixed-use, transit-oriented areas, but within these areas, luxury
developments targeted to higher-income residents are a notable exception. For example, Manville (2013)
observed how parking provision varied following Los Angeles’ ordinance for adaptive reuse projects downtown:
higher-end apartments frequently included two parking spaces, while more affordable housing options were
created with no on-site parking. In London, although developments in higher-density areas generally saw greater
reductions in parking provision, the urban center (home to the highest median incomes) was the exception: units
there were about 30% larger than in the second-densest area, and developers provided roughly three times as
much parking as in the second-densest area (Guo & Ren, 2012).
Gabbe et al. (2020) reported a similar finding in Seattle, where, unlike in Buffalo and Champaign, residential units
in mixed-use projects were associated with greater parking provision. They attributed this to the fact that mixeduse development was more common in Seattle’s higher-density neighborhoods, with higher land values and more
regulated on-street parking, which could lead developers to view on-site parking as more profitable or more
necessary.
These findings suggest that developers do not respond to the elimination of parking minimums by reducing
parking across all projects; rather, they assess demand on a project-by-project basis and offer options with

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

substantially reduced parking primarily when they anticipate users will either be less car-dependent or have
opportunities to park in nearby off-site lots or structures with excess capacity.

In Some Places, Nearby Garages Met Parking Needs
Even after parking requirements are lifted, many developers continue to recognize that guaranteed parking may
be necessary to secure tenants. However, in some cases, parking needs can be met more cost-effectively by
leasing spaces in nearby garages with excess capacity. For example, when Los Angeles lifted minimums as part
of the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance to facilitate the conversion of vacant downtown buildings into housing,
developers freed from parking requirements still provided more parking for apartments (about 1.2 spaces per unit)
than was formerly required, but they provided approximately half of the spaces off-site (Manville, 2013). Similarly,
developers voluntarily included about 1.3 spaces per condominium, with roughly one-third of the spaces off-site
(Manville, 2013).
When Champaign, Illinois lifted minimum parking requirements for its downtown and university districts, existing
garages and lots were used more efficiently as a result. Developers with excess parking in existing buildings
began leasing unused spaces to residents of new buildings, and the public parking system increased long-term
permit sales, generating record revenues (Sohoni & Lee, 2024). Similarly, after Cincinnati, Ohio removed
minimum parking requirements in its Central Business District, new developments became feasible, and the new
tenants leased spaces in nearby city-owned garages (Sohoni & Lee, 2025). These findings suggest that in areas
with abundant off-site parking, removing minimum requirements allows developers to meet tenant needs without
devoting as much land or resources to new parking.

Many Commercial Developments Still Include as Much Parking as Previously Required
When parking requirements were lifted for special public interest districts near transit in Atlanta, Georgia,
commercial developments continued to supply 5% more parking than was previously required. Financial
institutions considered the parking necessary for a building’s competitiveness and required it for lending (Nelson
et al., 1997). After minimum parking requirements were eliminated in Buffalo, the four commercial developments
included in the first study provided 64% more parking than the city previously required (Hess & Rehler, 2021).
Hess and Flowers (2023) interviewed local developers and lending professionals, who noted that national
commercial chains are typically subject to their own corporate minimum parking requirements. However, a later
study in Buffalo compared parking supplies at fast food developments before and after minimums were lifted. The
average fast food parking lot after the policy change was 25% smaller, with coffee and donut shops especially
likely to provide less parking (Rehler & Hess, 2024). The study of fast food developments compared parking
before and after Buffalo eliminated minimums, but it did not compare the parking relative to previous
requirements.
Overall, there is limited evidence on how commercial developers respond when cities repeal minimum parking
requirements, and more research is needed.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Other Effects
Eliminating minimums often produces the intended effects. While most research on the repeal of minimum
parking requirements has focused on changes in parking supply, a few studies have examined broader impacts,
particularly on housing production and affordability. Other documented outcomes include staff time savings,
increased public parking revenue, increased transit use, and more active street frontages. Further research would
help assess how transferable these outcomes are to different contexts.
Eliminating parking requirements might also be expected to increase economic vitality, decrease vacancy rates,
and avoid many of the other parking-related harms discussed in the earlier chapters of this report. To date,
however, the research literature does not offer any direct evidence.

Eliminating Minimums Enabled the Construction of More Housing
Given the earlier findings that parking requirements can increase construction costs, decrease profitability, make
some sites unfeasible for development, and limit the number of units per building, it is reasonable to expect that
removing them would enable more housing construction. Research across multiple contexts suggests this is the
case.
The best example examines the results from Los Angeles’ Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, which selectively lifted
parking minimums in 1999 as one component of the city’s effort to facilitate the conversion of vacant buildings into
housing. As shown in Figure 13, this policy enabled the construction of 6,500 new units downtown — more
housing in less than ten years than had been built in the previous thirty (Manville, 2013).
Figure 13. Housing Growth in Downtown Los Angeles

Data source: Manville (2013).

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Similarly, after Buffalo repealed minimum parking requirements citywide, Hess and Flowers (2023) found that
developers and lenders noted new opportunities: small, infill parcels became financially feasible to develop, and
walkable, transit-rich areas grew more desirable for new housing projects. In San Francisco and Seattle,
developers, architects, and planners reported that eliminating minimum parking requirements enabled higher unit
counts, reduced parking provision, and improved project feasibility (Millard-Ball, 2021). In Champaign, eliminating
residential parking minimums in the downtown and university districts shifted housing growth closer to campus.
Before the policy change, 43% of regional units were in Campustown; afterward, that share rose to 67% (Sohoni
& Lee, 2024).

Eliminating Minimums Enabled the Development of Smaller, More Affordable Homes
Research also shows that removing parking minimums expands the variety of housing types available, facilitating
smaller-scale and more affordable options that were discouraged under previous regulations.
One of the main reasons Champaign removed parking minimums was to improve housing affordability. After the
minimums were eliminated, apartments became smaller, with the average number of bedrooms dropping from 2.6
to 2.1 per unit. At the same time, unit density increased dramatically, rising 79% — from 95 units per acre to 170
units per acre (Sohoni & Lee, 2024). By fitting more, smaller units on each site, developers could offer new
housing at lower per-unit costs.
Eliminating minimum parking requirements for adaptive reuse projects in downtown Los Angeles gave residents
without a vehicle a new way to save money. Housing units without a bundled parking space were more affordable
than comparable units with parking included. Manville (2013) found that, on average, rent was $200 less
expensive for apartments without bundled parking, and condominiums without bundled parking cost $40,000 less.
Given the many potential confounding factors, assessing the citywide housing affordability impact of a housing
supply increase associated with eliminating parking requirements remains challenging, and no researchers have
attempted to quantify it.

Eliminating Minimums Saved Staff Time and Increased Public Parking Revenue
Hess and Flowers (2023) interviewed developers from the Buffalo area, who reported that after the city repealed
minimum parking requirements, they saved time and resources that they previously would have spent seeking
variances. This means city staff also spent less time processing variances and appeals. A Denver planning report
estimated that Community Planning and Development staff members spent a total of 654 hours administering
parking-related zoning regulations (City of Denver, 2025). Similarly, Manville (2013) noted that the Adaptive
Reuse Ordinance in Los Angeles allowed use changes without variances, avoiding lengthy appeals and delays.
By reducing how much time staff spend processing variances and appeals, eliminating minimums may also
translate into cost savings for the city.
Champaign’s public parking structures had excess capacity. After the city lifted minimum parking requirements in
certain areas, and developers constructed new buildings with reduced parking, long-term public parking permit
sales increased 39%, driving public parking revenue to an all-time high. Meanwhile, in neighboring Urbana, which
did not reform its parking requirements, permit sales did not increase, and parking revenue slightly declined
(Sohoni & Lee, 2024).

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Eliminating Minimums May Have Boosted Transit Use
Many cities seek to encourage transit use over solo driving to reduce congestion, boost fiscal and environmental
sustainability, and improve air quality. A large body of research shows how free, bundled, abundant parking is
associated with more driving. Sohoni and Lee (2024) considered the impact of eliminating minimum parking
requirements on transit use. After Champaign eliminated residential parking minimums in the university district,
Campustown sustained 2014 transit ridership levels and even increased transit ridership until the Covid-19
pandemic, while ridership was dropping in neighboring Urbana and the rest of Champaign.

Eliminating Minimums Enabled More Active Street Fronts
One stated goal behind Champaign’s parking reform was to enhance design and aesthetics. Active frontages
make streets more engaging and pleasant for pedestrians, but minimum parking requirements often limit these
frontages by making it prohibitively expensive to build apartment buildings without devoting the ground floor to
parking. Parking requirements can also prevent commercial storefronts on small infill parcels, because the space
required for parking reduces the area available for active uses. Developers surveyed by Hess and Flowers (2023)
reported that eliminating minimum parking requirements in Buffalo made small infill parcels feasible to develop.
Sohoni and Lee (2024) examined changes in active versus passive frontages before and after Champaign
eliminated minimums. They defined active frontages as those occupied by uses other than parking — such as
residential units, patios, gyms, or retail spaces — and found that the share of developments with active frontages
increased from 43% before reform to 81% afterward. On average, buildings with active frontages provided 56% of
the previously required parking, compared with 117% for buildings with passive frontages.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Conclusion
This report assembles research on the impacts of parking infrastructure, the effects of minimum parking
requirements, and the initial results from cities that have repealed them. Together, these studies document the
consequences of minimum parking requirements and provide emerging evidence on what happens when cities
eliminate them.
Parking infrastructure can produce unintended consequences that work against a wide range of urban policy
goals, including affordability, public health, environmental protection, and public finance. Research shows that
parking significantly increases the cost of housing, and many zero- and one-car households pay for housing with
bundled parking spaces they cannot use. Off-street parking also requires curb cuts, which reduce the amount of
curb parking available to the public and make sidewalks less safe and less pleasant to walk along. Parking
infrastructure further compromises walkability when it spreads destinations farther apart and dominates the
streetscape, displacing active storefronts or greenery. Parking lots contribute to urban heat, and, as impervious
surfaces, increase water pollution, flooding, and habitat degradation in local waterways. The supply chains that
support parking construction degrade the environment, consume large amounts of energy, and generate
emissions that harm respiratory and cardiovascular health. Finally, research suggests that surface parking lots
generate relatively little public revenue compared with land occupied by buildings, weakening local tax bases.
Because developers and property owners typically do not bear these broader social and environmental costs,
private markets are likely to supply more parking than is socially optimal, even in the absence of minimum parking
requirements.
Increasing levels of car ownership and driving naturally raise the demand for parking, but a substantial body of
research shows that the relationship runs both ways: abundant, convenient parking also encourages more cars
and more driving. Households with more off-street parking spaces own more cars, and even among car owners,
drivers with easier parking drive more often. Employer-paid parking strongly encourages driving alone, while
employees who must pay for their own parking are more likely to walk, bike, or take transit. Cities that have added
the most parking over time also see the largest increases in the share of workers commuting by car. These
findings suggest that minimum parking requirements can trigger a feedback loop: forcing developers to build more
parking leads to more cars and driving, which in turn raises citywide parking demand.
Multiple studies show that cities devote a large share of land to parking, and across contexts, even when parking
is free, many spaces go unused. When binding, minimum parking requirements contribute to an oversupply of
parking, and research finds they are often binding: developers seek variances, build only the minimum, or provide
less once requirements are lifted.
Research also shows that parking minimums do more than increase parking supply and the unintended
consequences that follow. Minimum parking requirements also prevent the creation of new homes and
businesses by raising construction costs, incentivizing developers to build fewer apartments per project, and
leaving buildings vacant when a new use would require more parking than a site can physically accommodate.
Figure 14 on page 56 traces the pathways linking minimum parking requirements to multiple urban impacts.
By studying cities that repealed minimum parking requirements, we can observe how developers respond.
Research on projects built after parking reform shows how developers’ voluntarily provided parking compares with

54

THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

previous requirements. In most cases, developers still provide parking, and in some cases, they provide as much
or more than before. Developers often meet or exceed the old minimums for luxury housing in central districts,
while they frequently provide less than formerly required for mixed-use developments, in dense or transit-rich
areas, or in neighborhoods where nearby parking facilities have excess capacity.
A smaller body of research highlights additional benefits that follow the repeal of minimum parking requirements.
These studies find that eliminating minimums not only slows the expansion of new parking but also encourages
adaptive reuse, supports more housing development in areas where minimums are removed, and expands
housing options by enabling smaller units and units without on-site parking. Some early work also links the repeal
of minimum parking requirements to more active street frontages, increased municipal parking revenue, and
higher rates of transit use, though further research is necessary to substantiate these relationships.
Until recently, few cities had eliminated minimum parking requirements, and so far, most post-reform studies have
focused on how much parking developers provide for new residential developments. Research on other outcomes
of repeal remains limited. However, the fact that eliminating minimum parking requirements usually slows the
growth of new parking infrastructure is significant when considered alongside the well-documented negative
impacts of excessive parking.
The combined evidence on parking infrastructure, minimum requirements, and repeal outcomes provides
important context for evaluating parking policy. Researchers who have studied the impacts of parking
infrastructure and parking policy generally recommend eliminating minimum parking requirements. Doing so
removes a major barrier to new housing and businesses, decreases the likelihood that parking will be
oversupplied, and encourages more efficient use of existing spaces. Slowing the growth of parking infrastructure
can help improve walkability and urban design, reduce environmental harms, and support more sustainable travel
behavior.

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

Figure 14. Impacts of Minimum Parking Requirements

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THE IMPACTS OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMEMTS: A RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

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3320 Public Affairs Building
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656
[email protected]
its.ucla.edu/parking-center
© 2026

ZONING PRACTICE

JUNE 2017

AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION

ISSUE NUMBER 6

PRACTICE PARKING REFORM

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Eliminating Parking Minimums
By Ben LeRoy

For decades, many American planners unquestioningly applied minimum off-street
parking requirements to projects of every conceivable size, type, and context.

THE CASE FOR PARKING REFORM
The case for parking reform is not self-evident
in our auto-dominated society, especially to

those not trained as urban planners. Residents and business owners alike have legitimate concerns about ever-increasing congestion levels. Accordingly, a discussion of how
to achieve parking reform would be lacking
if it did not include a summary of the top
reasons why parking reform is a worthwhile
goal. Although parking requirements are
well-intentioned, they raise housing prices,
induce automobile traffic, and degrade the
built environment.
Increased Housing Prices
Because Americans often park for free, they
could be forgiven for thinking that parking
is free to build and maintain. Unfortunately,
nothing could be further from the truth. It
turns out that parking—and more specifically,
parking produced as a result of minimum
parking requirements—is a significant contributor to unaffordable housing.
The construction of parking carries substantial costs. Surface parking consumes

valuable land that could otherwise be used
for productive buildings, while structured
parking costs average nearly $19,000 per
space (Cudney 2016). With parking requirements elevating parking supplies beyond
what the market would normally produce,
parkers often do not directly cover the cost of
their own parking. Instead, the cost of parking
is tucked into rent, hiding the true allocation
of the burden. Non-parkers often end up subsidizing parkers, producing a more expensive
and less fair result than allowing developers
to build only as much parking as parkers are
willing to pay for.
Induced Automobile Traffic
Intended to mitigate congestion, minimum
parking requirements have unfortunately produced the opposite effect. By hiding the true
cost of automobile ownership and spreading
out destinations, minimum parking requirements create the very traffic burden they were
created to contain. A recent analysis by the

Ben LeRoy

Whether drawn from the quasi-scientific
findings of the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ Parking Generation report or simply
borrowed whole cloth from other cities’ zoning codes, minimum parking requirements
continued to grow more onerous and complex.
Communities across the nation watched as
formerly walkable neighborhoods were hollowed out by parking. Even as planners crafted
complete streets policies and rejiggered tax
incentives for infill redevelopment, minimum
parking requirements were largely ignored,
taken on faith as a necessity for any wellplanned city.
But many planners have woken up. A
wealth of data-oriented research—from Parking Reform Made Easy by Richard Willson,
faicp, to the work of Chuck Marohn, aicp’s
Strong Towns organization, to the seminal The
High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup,
faicp—has produced a growing consensus
within the planning profession that the traditional approach to requiring automobile
parking produces more harm than good. In
response, cities and counties have begun
chipping away at their parking requirements
with a variety of techniques, offering urbanminded developers the opportunity to reduce
their parking burden through shared parking,
payments in lieu of parking, and smarter management of the public parking supply.
While these incremental steps have generally proven popular with developers, relatively few communities have taken the bolder
step of eliminating parking requirements in
part or in full. The following sections lay out
the case for parking reform, profile recent
reform efforts in three cities, and present a
series of strategies to help planners make the
case for eliminating off-street parking requirements to residents and elected officials.

In dense urban areas with high land values, many developers choose to
build parking at surface level and elevate the building on stilts. The effect at
street level is unpleasant, especially for pedestrians.

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State Smart Transportation Initiative and the
University of Connecticut found substantial
association between increases in a city’s
parking supply and subsequent increases in
car commuting (McCahill 2016). Planners are
unable to conduct a controlled experiment to
test this phenomenon in the real world, but
a wealth of evidence suggests that the relief
that parking requirements supposedly buy
from traffic congestion is temporary at best.

PARKING REFORM IN PRACTICE
While many cities have eliminated nonresidential minimum off-street parking requirements in their central business districts, very
few have removed parking minimums entirely.
For communities contemplating more dramatic reform, the cities of Champaign, Illinois;
Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Buffalo, New York,
illustrate three distinct models.
Champaign, Illinois
The college town of Champaign, Illinois, has
seen substantial reinvestment in its core
neighborhoods over the past 15 years. Spurred
on by growing enrollment at the University of
Illinois, local developers have engaged in a
building boom in the high-density residential
neighborhood (known as the University District) adjacent to campus. At the same time, a
greater number of all sorts of residents—graduate students, young professionals, empty
nesters, and even families—have driven a
smaller boom in Champaign’s vibrant downtown. With space at a premium and walkability
in high demand, developers have frequently

University of Illinois Wright

A Degraded Built Environment
Ask the residents of your community whether
they would prefer to spend their time in the
city’s most walkable district or its largest parking lot, and you will hear nearly unanimous
acclaim for the former (a few people are born
contrarians). Julie Campoli’s excellent Made
for Walking examines 12 unusually walkable
neighborhoods across North America. While
these neighborhoods vary in many respects,
they share the theme of possessing a limited
and carefully managed parking supply. As
the author notes, “Rather than feeding autodependency, smarter parking policies help
initiate a cycle of urban pedestrianism. . . .
Replacing surface lots and street-level garages
with homes or businesses improves the quality of the street and encourages trips by bike
or on foot.”

The University of Illinois Campus Master Plan shows several potential future
buildings (denoted by lighter coloration and anticipated GSF), some of which
are sited on existing private land that the University does not currently own.

sought (and been granted) relief from the generally applicable parking requirements.
Over the same period, Champaign’s
policy makers have recognized a change in
community attitudes toward transportation.
Between 2000 and 2012, nearly a dozen text
amendments reduced parking requirements
for particular land uses or overlay zones.
The Champaign Tomorrow comprehensive
plan, adopted in 2011, acknowledges the
importance of balancing the parking supply against other transportation and urban
design concerns to enhance walkability in
core neighborhoods. With a comprehensive
update to the zoning ordinance following
on the heels of Champaign Tomorrow and
Champaign’s minimum parking requirements
experiencing death by a thousand cuts, the
city’s planning staff began to consider the
possibility of taking a bold step: eliminating
parking requirements in the core neighborhoods of the community.
A quirk of geography and demography
made Champaign’s University District an at-

tractive test case. Surrounded by railroad
tracks to the east, a busy arterial street to the
north, and the University of Illinois campus
to the east and south, the University District
is almost an island of student housing. These
barriers largely prevent the commingling of
student housing with nearby neighborhoods
composed of home owners, a typical source
of NIMBY sentiment in many college towns.
Furthermore, the University District’s robust
transit network, its proximity to campus, and
the lack of on-campus student parking combined to keep daily driving demand among the
University District’s (mostly student) residents
at a minimum. Extensive interviews of University District landlords confirmed staff observations that the residential parking supply was
experiencing a vacancy rate of approximately
30 percent. At study sessions with the plan
commission and city council, elected and appointed officials expressed their openness to
further reductions in parking requirements.
With no opposition arising from home owners
(who were indifferent) or the development
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Andrew Garner, City of Fayetteville

community (which was eager for parking reform), Champaign staff anticipated smooth
passage of a proposal to eliminate all parking
requirements within the University District.
However, the proposal hit an unexpected
speed bump at the plan commission meeting.
The University of Illinois sent a representative
to the meeting to register the university’s opposition. Citing the university’s master plan,
the university’s director of real estate planning and services expressed concern over the
impact the proposal would have on privately
held surface parking lots adjacent to campus:
“Once this law is eliminated those parking
lots will become the hottest commodity in
Champaign County for high-density development. It turns out that some of those that are
preserved right now for parking for the private
sector are locations where we have proposed
future academic buildings” (Champaign
2015). The commission was unmoved by this
line of dissent, but nevertheless continued
the hearing to another date. At that meeting,
the university abandoned its original argument, suggesting instead that a tightening
of the residential parking supply could lead
to overflow and enforcement impacts on the
university’s parking supply. Staff countered,
noting that the university’s parking supply is
largely controlled by a combination of meters
and permits, making it highly unlikely that
University District residents would try to use
university parking as long-term parking.
Ultimately, both the planning commission and city council approved the proposal,
and in October 2015 Champaign eliminated
parking requirements within the University
District. As predicted, a number of student
housing developments submitted permit applications shortly afterwards, as developers
were waiting to make use of the lower parking requirements. These developments all
provide parking at different rates, but none of
them provides as much parking as was previously required. As the Fall 2017 semester approaches, these developments will be opening their doors for the first time. Others are in
the pipeline right now. In the meantime, the
city expanded parking reform to the nearby
Midtown and Downtown areas, eliminating
parking requirements in core areas that serve
a much less student-oriented population. It
is possible—even likely—that some of the
developments built in the wake of this reform
will find that they have underbuilt or overbuilt
their parking supply, and the city plans to

The second floor of Fayetteville’s Nelson’s Crossing Shopping Center sat
vacant for years as it was “underparked” according to the city’s parking
requirements table. Once nonresidential parking requirements were
repealed, businesses could occupy the second floor, improving the
development’s financial productivity.

monitor private parking demand and pricing
over the coming years. Staff anticipates that
the findings will show that any concerns were
largely unfounded: The market will value parking appropriately for the first time in decades,
and Champaign’s core neighborhoods will
continue to mature into more walkable areas
as the effects of a one-size-fits-all parking
policy begin to fade.
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Fayetteville, Arkansas, is similar to Champaign, Illinois, in many ways. Both are college
towns with approximately 80,000 residents.
Both host a flagship state university. Both recognized a problem with their existing parking
regulations. While Champaign has eliminated
all parking minimums in select areas, in 2015
Fayetteville eliminated all nonresidential parking requirements citywide, leaving parking
requirements for residential uses in place.
As in Champaign, Fayetteville’s parking
reform efforts were built on the foundation of
a comprehensive plan commitment to reducing automobile dependence. The Fayetteville
Downtown Master Plan expanded on this idea,
recommending a “Smart Parking” approach
including the adoption of shared parking
standards and revised minimum parking requirements. But change began slowly. While
the city amended its downtown parking regulations to allow changes in land use without
the provision of new parking, new construction and building expansion still triggered the
standard parking requirements. A separate

amendment allowed bike parking spaces to
be substituted for automobile parking spaces.
Nevertheless, most projects in downtown
Fayetteville (and everywhere else) were still
subject to minimum parking requirements.
The impetus to completely eliminate
nonresidential parking requirements came
from the community’s commercial real estate
brokers. Planning staff noted the frustration
many brokers expressed in trying to fill vacant
commercial spaces with new uses required to
provide more parking than the original use.
This issue was not limited to downtown, but
extended even into the city’s most automobile-oriented districts. Noting the constraining
effect parking requirements were having on
the local economy, staff proposed cutting all
nonresidential parking requirements.
To the surprise of many, the adoption of such sweeping parking reform went
relatively smoothly. Fayetteville’s planning
director, Andrew Garner, aicp, recounts that
staff framed the proposal to tick many boxes
for both liberal and conservative community
members and elected officials. Parking reform
in Fayetteville found bipartisan support in
its projected sustainability improvements,
reduced burden on small business owners,
and individual property rights. While some
mild opposition arose, enthusiastic support
from several planning commissioners assured
passage. Tracy Hoskins, a businessman and
developer who sits on the planning commission, acknowledged that while the parking
reform experiment might create a few negative
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Andrew Garner, City of Fayetville

The proposed Lumiere Theatre in downtown Fayetteville would not provide
any parking of its own, relying instead on the private and public supply on
surrounding streets and lots.

impacts, “the question is does this cure more
problems than it creates? And absolutely, it
does” (Gill 2015).
As Fayetteville’s parking reform approaches its second anniversary, Garner
reports that results have been as expected so
far. In more auto-oriented districts, businesses continue to provide ample parking. Some
sites exceed the old minimum requirements,
while others have made use of the increased
flexibility to fill spaces previously kept vacant
due to code requirements. Meanwhile, downtown Fayetteville is making room for a pair of
theater projects that planners anticipate will
make the area even more vibrant. One of the
theaters proposes no parking at all, while the
other (which includes a small number of onsite dwelling units) proposes a small lot for
staff and residents. No matter the location,
Fayetteville businesses are now free to provide as much—or as little—parking as they
need to become successful contributors to
the community.
Buffalo, New York
Parking reform in Champaign and Fayetteville
may seem like a leap to planners in communities still nipping and tucking their parking
codes, but their partial parking repeals are
downright modest compared to Buffalo, New
York. That city closed out 2016 by adopting a

sweeping new unified development ordinance
that, among other things, eliminated parking
requirements almost universally.
Having grown to over 550,000 residents
before World War II, Buffalo has spent the last
several decades shrinking to approximately half
its peak population. Buffalo’s population decline has been accompanied by a hollowing out
of its many prewar neighborhoods by parking
lots. As one civic booster quipped about downtown Buffalo in 2003, “If you look very closely,
there are still some buildings that are standing
in the way of parking progress” (Shoup 2005).
Not content to idly watch the city continue to slide, the city’s strategic planning office
launched the Buffalo Green Code planning
effort in April 2010. This project stripped the
city’s existing unified development ordinance
down to the studs, replacing its standard usebased zoning with a form-based code, retooling street design standards, and severely curtailing parking requirements. As one project
consultant put it, the Green Code represents
“a radical reimagining of how they were going
to do every facet of the development controls
in the city of Buffalo” (Strungys 2017).
The sheer scope of the Green Code project necessitated an extremely robust public
input process, with over 240 community meetings attracting over 6,500 participants. With
every element of the development control

process up for review, parking received substantial emphasis during these meetings but
did not lead the agenda. As project manager
John Fell, aicp, recalls, “parking was probably a top five important issue to the public,”
but people were equally or more concerned
with building height and materials, site design, and the redevelopment of large vacant
institutional sites. The project also recruited
a citizen advisory committee, composed of
representatives from every city neighborhood,
to both act as a sounding board and recruit
neighbors to public meetings.
The input process gave the planning team opportunities to urge concerned
residents to consider a more comprehensive
transportation demand management (TDM)
approach to congestion, rather than clinging
to an outdated system of parking requirements that had only managed to degrade
the urban environment while doing little to
mitigate congestion. Under the new code,
projects consisting of (a) 5,000 square feet of
new construction or (b) 50,000 square feet of
a renovation involving a change of use must
prepare a TDM plan. While each project must
accommodate the travel demand it generates,
developers may employ a host of demand
management tools ranging from bicycle parking to subsidized transit passes to alternative
work schedules.
The full impact of Buffalo’s parking
reform will not be felt for several years, but
things are already starting to change. Staff
members report fielding interest from a few
developers in adding dwelling units without
additional parking to small projects already
under way. Though many of Buffalo’s walkable
neighborhoods currently bear the scars of
required parking lots, look for these areas to
mature and thrive as the city’s residents rediscover the value of urban-style developments
in their urban neighborhoods.
STRATEGIES FOR SELLING PARKING REFORM
The context for parking reform in each of the
preceding examples was unique, as it is for
every community. The elected officials and
citizens in these cities may have shared a
willingness to listen, learn, and experiment
with parking reform in a way that other communities are not quite ready for. Nevertheless,
some of the strategies employed are transferrable to municipalities of every type and size.
Consider trying the following strategies when
pursuing parking reform in your community.
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Tim Kirkby

Two projects, one profit margin: A developer expects the same return from
either building, but the one granted parking flexibility presents a much
more welcoming face to the street.

Employ Scenarios and Alternatives
Parking requirements have been the law of
the land for so long that many people have
trouble envisioning how a newly constructed
building with little or no parking might function in their city. The local development community can show the impact of parking requirements on both the design and finances
of a proposed project.
In Champaign, architect Tim Kirkby, aicp,
demonstrated to the plan commission how
one of his projects would change if parking
requirements were eliminated (Champaign
2015). Kirkby presented two alternatives side
by side. While both alternatives projected an
expected return of 7.5 percent, their form and
finances differed dramatically. The “required
parking” alternative was two stories taller
than the “flexible parking” alternative, and
was largely lifted up on stilts to accommodate
ground-floor parking. In contrast, the “flexible
parking” alternative had one fewer curb cut
and presented ground-level dwelling units facing the street. Perhaps more compelling was
the financial comparison of the two buildings.
The cost of building required parking was
projected to increase rents by approximately
33 percent! This real-life example of a building
that would be made both more attractive and
more affordable was very compelling evidence
of the wisdom of eliminating parking requirements in the University District.
The development community is already
a natural ally of any planner seeking to ease

parking requirements, although care must be
taken to avoid stirring up legitimate concerns
that parking reform is simply a giveaway of the
city’s regulatory power to enhance the private
sector’s bottom line. Asking developers to
compare “required” and “flexible” parking
alternatives that project the same profit margin can mitigate these concerns.
Put the Focus on Residents, Not Drivers
Many parking reform efforts are stalled by
neighboring residents and businesses sounding the alarm about parking congestion. Even
if these concerns are overblown (as they are
in many cases), parking congestion proves
to be a difficult ground on which to do battle.
Instead, consider shifting the conversation to
the positive impact that parking reform has on
the wallets of residents.
As discussed above, overly burdensome
parking requirements raise the cost of construction and building maintenance. These
costs are tucked into the rent and purchase
price of building, needlessly raising the price
on every activity conducted within those
buildings. Invite concerned neighbors and
elected officials to speculate on what it could
mean for the city coffers if residents, no longer
tied up by unnecessary parking costs, found
themselves with a greater disposable income.
A common rejoinder to this argument
raises the specter that developers will simply
keep rents the same and pocket the cost savings as extra profit. Fortunately, a couple of

rebuttals address this line of attack. First, in a
competitive housing market tenants will generally select the housing option with greater
amenities (including parking) if rent is the
same, providing a strong economic incentive
for landlords with less parking to lower their
rents to remain competitive. Additionally,
even if prices do not drop for some reason,
it is hard to argue in favor of forcing tenants
to waste money on unused parking simply to
spite developers and reduce their profits.
Fairness arguments can be very powerful in these situations. Is it good city policy
to make people pay for parking they don’t
use? Depending on the community, appealing to housing affordability can be a powerful argument.
Substitute Local Examples for National
Studies
The field of parking policy research has produced extensive data about nearly every aspect of parking, from vacancy rates to supply/
demand models to land consumption. Unfortunately, these studies may be of limited use
in front of elected officials disinclined to look
to national trends for local decisions. Instead,
generate your own local data and examples
to create a compelling narrative that parking
reform is a unique solution for your unique
city’s unique problems.
In Fayetteville, planners could point to
buildings in otherwise busy commercial districts that were being left vacant due to excessive parking requirements. In Buffalo, staff
successfully argued that residential parking
requirements were excessive in a community
where 30 percent of households did not own a
single car. In Champaign, questionnaires sent
to landlords revealed that most apartment
buildings had parking occupancy rates of only
60 to 80 percent, even at reduced rental rates.
These findings mirrored numbers from the
city’s own public parking permits in the area,
which had cut rates in an attempt to preserve
the 70 percent occupancy rate. In all these
cases, the local story told the tale of why parking reform was important.
Remember, too, that the story does not
end upon the successful adoption of new
parking regulations. As the built environment
changes over the years, consider tracking
building permits to see how much parking
developers are providing. In Champaign, staff
projected that most future buildings would
likely provide parking at 50 to 75 percent of
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the rate formerly required, promising to return
to the plan commission with an update in
a few years. One and a half years later, this
projection has been borne out by the building permits received for review. Tracking data
both before and after adoption of parking
reform reassures elected officials that they
can always change the
rules back if an unforeseen
negative trend arises.

ering reducing their parking requirements.
Visit this site to gain ideas for your community, and update the map once you have made
progress toward your goals. The planning
trade press is also very receptive to stories
about parking reform.
Don’t hesitate to contact publications
like Planning magazine,
Streetsblog, CityLab, or
your favorite planning
blog. You may be surprised
Explore the Strong
SHARING THE STORY
at their willingness to
Perhaps your community
shine a spotlight on your
Towns parking
will be the next to make
unique efforts.
reform map
waves in the planning
Finally, consider
world by adopting sweepsubmitting a session
(strongtowns.org/
ing parking reforms. Or
proposal to a conference.
perhaps your community is
Parking sessions are often
parking) to see
still testing the waters with
standing room only at APA
how communities
incremental tweaks to the
conferences, but other
system. Whatever position
connected professional
around the country
you find yourself in, reorganizations such as the
are updating
member to share the story
International City/County
with the world! Parking
Management Association,
their parking
reform is still a relatively
the American Public Works
requirements.
nascent movement, and
Association, and the Govpractitioners around the
ernment Finance Officers
country benefit from seeAssociation can benefit
ing what their colleagues
from learning about parkin other cities and states
ing reform as well.
have accomplished.
It is an exciting time to be working in
Strong Towns maintains a user-updated
the field of parking reform. Most cities emmap of communities that have or are considployed the same parking policy playbook

REFERENCES
Campoli, Julie. 2012. Made for Walking: Density and Neighborhood Form. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Available at tinyurl.com/k3557tq.
Champaign (Illinois), City of. 2015. “Champaign Plan Commission Meeting, May 9.”
Available at tinyurl.com/mwygock.
Cudney, Gary. 2016. Parking Structure Cost Outlook for 2016. Available at tinyurl.com/
khqo8am.
Gill, Todd. “Fayetteville considers eliminating minimum parking standards.” Fayetteville
Flyer, August 10, 2015. Available at tinyurl.com/mwey2l3.
McCahill, Christopher T., Norman Garrick, Carol Atkinson-Palombo, and Adam Polinski.
2016. “Effects of Parking Provision on Automobile Use in Cities.” Transportation Research Record, 2543: 159–165. Available at tinyurl.com/mpx65od .
Shoup, Donald C. 2005. The High Cost of Free Parking. Chicago: American Planning Association. Available at planning.org/publications/book/9026730.
Strungys, Arista. 2017. Telephone interview with author, February 6.

through much of the 20th century, but cities
are beginning to experiment with individualized solutions.
No single parking policy will be the right
choice for every city, but the examples recounted in this article may provide a road map
for your community to rethink how parking fits
in with other planning goals.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben LeRoy is an associate planner for
Champaign, Illinois, and a 2013 graduate
of the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. His master’s capstone analyzed
the impacts of minimum parking requirements
on the city’s rental housing supply. He has
also drafted new infill-friendly zoning districts
in the city’s core neighborhoods and rewritten
the planned development ordinance.

Cover: 1343024/Pixabay.com, CC0

Vol. 34, No. 6
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DOES YOUR ZONING STILL
REQUIRE OFF-STREET
PARKING?

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205 N. Michigan Ave.
Suite 1200
Chicago, IL 60601–592

ZONING PRACTICE

AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION

ZONING PRACTICE

FEBRUARY 2020

AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION

ISSUE NUMBER 2

PRACTICE PARKING REFORM

The Pseudoscience of Parking Requirements
Donald Shoup, faicp

At the dawn of the automobile age, suppose Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller
had asked how city planners could increase
the demand for cars and gasoline. Consider
three options. First, divide the city into
separate zones (housing here, jobs there,
shopping somewhere else) to create travel
between the zones. Second, limit density to
spread everything apart and further increase
travel. Third, require ample off-street parking
everywhere so cars will be the easiest and
cheapest way to travel.
American cities have unwisely adopted
these three car-friendly policies. Separated
land uses, low density, and ample free
parking create drivable cities but prevent
walkable neighborhoods. Although city planners did not intend to enrich the automobile
and oil industries, their plans have shaped
our cities to suit our cars.
Parking requirements are particularly
ill-advised because they directly subsidize
cars. We drive to one place to do one thing
and then to another place to do another thing
and then drive a long way back home, parking free everywhere. In The High Cost of Free
Parking, published by the American Planning
Association in 2005, I argued that parking
requirements increase traffic congestion,
pollute the air, encourage sprawl, raise housing costs, degrade urban design, prevent
walkability, damage the economy, and penalize everyone who cannot afford a car. Since
then, to my knowledge, no member of the
planning profession has argued that parking
requirements do not cause these harmful
effects. Instead, a flood of recent research
has shown that parking requirements are
poisoning our cities with too much parking.
Despite all the harm off-street parking requirements cause, they are almost an
established religion in zoning practice. One
should not criticize anyone else’s religion,
but I’m a protestant when it comes to parking
requirements. And I believe zoning needs a
reformation.
THREE PARKING REFORMS
Reform is difficult because parking requirements do not exist without a reason. If

on-street parking is free, removing offstreet parking requirements will overcrowd
the on-street parking and everyone will
complain. Therefore, to distill 800 pages
of The High Cost of Free Parking into three
bullet points, I recommended three parking
reforms that can improve cities, the economy, and the environment:
•

•

•

Remove off-street parking requirements.
Developers and businesses can then
decide how many parking spaces to provide for their customers.
Charge the right prices for on-street
parking. The right prices are the lowest
prices that will leave one or two open
spaces on each block, so there will be no
parking shortages. Prices will balance the
demand and supply for on-street space.
Spend the parking revenue to improve
public services on the metered streets.
If everybody sees their meter money at
work, the new public services can make
demand-based prices for on-street parking politically popular.

Each of these three policies supports
the other two. Spending the meter revenue
to improve neighborhood public services
can create political support to charge the
right prices for curb parking. If cities charge
the right prices to produce one or two open
spaces on every block, no one can say there
is a shortage of curb parking. If there is no
shortage of curb parking, cities can then
remove their off-street parking requirements.
Finally, removing off-street parking requirements will increase the demand for curb
parking, which will increase the revenue to
pay for public services.
THE MOST EMOTIONAL TOPIC IN
TRANSPORTATION
Everyone wants to park free, and most
people consider parking a personal issue,
not a policy problem. Rational people quickly
become emotional about parking, and
staunch conservatives turn into ardent communists. Thinking about parking seems to
take place in the reptilian cortex, the most

primitive part of the brain responsible for
snap judgments about urgent fight-or-flight
issues, such as how to avoid being eaten. The
reptilian cortex is said to govern instinctive
behavior like aggression, territoriality, and
ritual display, which all play a role in parking.
Parking clouds people’s minds, shifting analytic faculties to a lower level. Some
strongly support market prices—except for
parking. Some strongly oppose subsidies—
except for parking. Some abhor planning
regulations—except for parking. Some insist
on rigorous data collection and statistical tests—except for parking. This parking
exceptionalism has impoverished thinking
about parking policies, and ample free parking is seen as a goal that planning should
produce. If drivers paid the full cost of their
parking, it would seem too expensive, so we
expect someone else to pay for it. But a city
where everyone happily pays for everyone
else’s free parking is a fool’s paradise.
Few people are interested in parking
itself, but parking strongly affects issues
people do care strongly about, such as
affordable housing, climate change, economic development, public transportation,
traffic congestion, and urban design. For
example, parking requirements reduce the
supply and increase the price of housing.
Parking subsidies lure people into cars from
public transportation, bicycles, or their
own two feet. Cruising for free curb parking congests roads, pollutes the air, and
adds greenhouse gases. Do people really
want a drive-in dystopia more than they
want affordable housing, clean air, walkable
neighborhoods, good urban design, and a
sustainable planet?
Reforms in planning for parking may be
the cheapest, quickest, and most politically
feasible way to achieve many social, economic, and environmental goals.
THE EFFECTS OF PARKING REQUIREMENTS
Cities have parking requirements for every
art gallery, bowling alley, dance hall, fitness
club, hardware store, movie theater, night
club, pet store, tavern, and zoo without
knowing the demand for parking at any of
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AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION | page 2

• How much the required parking
spaces cost
• How much drivers are willing to
pay for parking
• How parking requirements increase the
price of everything except parking
• How parking requirements affect architecture and urban design
• How parking requirements affect travel
choices and traffic congestion
• How parking requirements affect air
pollution, fuel consumption, and CO2
emissions
The High Cost of Parking Requirements
Cost is an especially important unknown. A
recent study found that the parking spaces
required for shopping centers in Los Angeles
increase the cost of building a shopping
center by 67 percent if the parking is in an
aboveground structure and by 93 percent if
the parking is underground (Shoup 2014).
Retailers pass this high cost on to all shoppers, regardless of how they travel. People
who cannot afford a car pay more for their
groceries so richer people can park free
when they drive to the store.
Without knowing how much the
required parking spaces cost to build,
planners cannot know how parking requirements increase the cost of housing. Small,
spartan apartments cost less to build than
large, luxury apartments, but their parking
spaces cost the same. Because many cities
require the same number of spaces for every
apartment regardless of its size or quality,
the required parking disproportionately
increases the cost of low-income housing.
One study found that minimum parking
requirements raise housing costs by 13 percent for families without cars (Gabbe and
Pierce 2017).
Drivers pay for their cars, fuel, tires,
maintenance, repairs, insurance, and

Stuart Cohen, TransForm

them. Despite a lack of theory and data,
planners set parking requirements for hundreds of land uses in hundreds of cities—the
10,000 commandments of planning for
parking. Planners have adopted a veneer of
professional language to justify the practice,
but planning for parking is learned only on
the job and it is more a political activity than
a professional skill.
Consider what planners do not know
when they set parking requirements:

Figure 1. An office park on the border of Milpitas and San Jose, California.

registration fees, but they usually don’t
pay for parking. Who does pay for the parking? Everyone, including people who cannot
afford a car. All of life’s necessities cost more
in order to provide free parking.
America is a free country, and many people seem to think that means parking should
be free. Parking requirements enable everyone to park free at everyone else’s expense,
and no one knows that anyone is paying anything. Parking is free, however, only because
everything else is more expensive. Parking
requirements are well-intentioned, but good
intentions do not guarantee good results or
mitigate unintended harm.
The required parking takes up a lot of
space. Parking lots typically have about 330
square feet per space. Because there are
at least three off-street parking spaces per
car in the United States, there are at least
990 square feet of off-street parking space
per car. In comparison, there are about 800
square feet of housing space per person
in the United States. The area of off-street
parking per car is thus larger than the area of
housing per human.
In astronomy, dark energy is a force
that permeates space and causes the
universe to expand. Similarly, in urban
planning, parking requirements are a force

that causes cities to expand. The higher the
parking requirements, the stronger the dark
energy that spreads cities out and rips them
apart. Typically, the process of setting the
parking requirements is closer to astrology
than astronomy.
Parking Requirements in Practice
When I am invited speak in a city, I start with
an aerial view of a site in the city with too
much parking, such as this photo of an office
park in San Jose, California (Figure 1). It looks
like a giant parking lot with a few buildings.
I then show a page from the city’s parking requirements, which are so precise and
so specific for so many land uses that most
people probably assume planners carefully
study parking (Table 1). Instead, planners
are winging it. Planners are not oracles who
can divine the demand for parking. I have
never met a city planner who could explain
why any parking requirement should not
be higher or lower. To set parking requirements, planners usually take instructions
from elected officials, copy other cities’
parking requirements, or rely on unreliable
surveys. Parking requirements are closer to
sorcery than to science.
Next, I show the size of the parking lots resulting from the city’s parking

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AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION | page 3

TABLE 1. SELECT PARKING REQUIREMENTS FOR
“ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION” USES IN SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA
Use

Vehicle Parking Required

Arcade, amusement game

1 per 200 sq. ft. of floor area

Batting cages

1 per station, plus 1 per employee

Bowling establishment

7 per lane

Driving range

1 per tee, plus 1 per employee

Golf course

8 per golf hole, plus 1 per employee

Health club, gymnasium

1 per 80 sq. ft. recreational space

Miniature golf

1.25 per tee, plus 1 per employee

Performing arts rehearsal space

1 per 250 sq. ft. of floor area

Poolroom/billiards establishment

1 per 200 sq. ft. of floor area

Private club or lodge

1 per 4 fixed seats on the premises, or 1 per 6 linear
feet of seating, plus 1 per 200 square feet of area
without seating but designed for meeting or assembly
by guests, plus 1 per 500 sq. ft. of outdoor area
developed for recreational purposes

Recreation, commercial (indoor)

1 per 80 sq. ft. of recreational area

Recreation, commercial (outdoor)

20 per acre of site

Skating rink

1 per 50 sq. ft. of floor area

Swim and tennis club

1 per 500 sq. ft. of recreation area

requirements. For many land uses, the parking lots are bigger than the buildings they
serve (Figure 2). There is more space for
parking than for people. For example, San
Jose, California, requires a restaurant to
provide a parking lot that is more than eight
times the size of the restaurant itself. The
requirements provide parking everywhere
anyone wants to go, but they also create
places where few people want to be.
Most people think parking behaves like
a liquid. If the parking supply is squeezed
in one place, cars will park somewhere else.
But parking behaves more like a gas. The
number of cars expands to fill the available
space, and more parking leads to more cars.
Nevertheless, planners usually assume that
cars and people come in fixed proportions,
and they often require parking in proportion
to people: per beautician, dentist, mechanic,
nun, student, teacher, or tennis player. If
parking were priced to cover its cost, people
would own fewer cars and drive less.
Parking requirements are not only
ridiculous but also dangerous. They make
cities friendly to cars but not to people—drivable but not walkable. As Jane Jacobs wrote,
“The more downtown is broken up and interspersed with parking lots and garages, the

duller and deader it becomes, and there is
nothing more repellent than a dead downtown.” We want more out of our streets than
traffic and free parking. We also want safety,
health, walkability, prosperity, and pleasure.
The Unequal Burden of Parking Requirements
Cities require parking for every building
without considering how the required spaces
place a heavy burden on poor people. A single parking space, however, can cost more
than the net worth of many U.S. households.
One study found that in 2015 the average
construction cost (excluding land cost) for
parking structures was about $24,000 per
space for aboveground parking and $34,000
per space for underground parking.
By comparison, the U.S. Census of
Wealth and Asset Ownership in 2015 found
that the median net worth (the value of
assets minus debts) was $110,500 for white
households, $19,990 for Hispanic households and $12,780 for black households. One
space in a parking structure, therefore, costs
more than the entire net worth of more than
half of all Hispanic and black households in
the country.
Free curb parking and off-street parking requirements have spread the city out so

that most people need a car to get a job, go
to school, and shop. In a misguided attempt
to provide free parking for everyone, cities
encourage poor people to buy cars they can
ill afford, often financing them by subprime
loans at high interest rates. Free parking
has the veneer of equality, but it increases
inequality. It is enormously wasteful and
grossly unfair.
Assumptions and Parking Requirements
Parking requirements resemble what engineers call a “kludge”—an awkward but
temporarily effective solution to a problem,
with many moving parts that are clumsy, inefficient, hard to understand, and expensive
to maintain. Off-street parking requirements are a kludge designed to prevent a
shortage of free on-street parking. Parking
requirements are superficially plausible but
fundamentally wrong.
Parking requirements are like barnacles
on a ship, accumulating one at a time and
slowing the ship’s progress. They have severed the link between the cost of providing
parking and the price that drivers pay for
it. They increase the demand for cars, and
when citizens object to the resulting traffic
congestion, cities respond by restricting
development to reduce traffic. That is, cities
require parking and then limit the density of
people to limit the density of cars. Free parking has become the arbiter of urban form,
and cars have replaced people as zoning’s
real density concern.
Parking requirements create many
disputes about how many parking spaces
a building “needs,” with each side making
solemn claims backed by dubious evidence. Consider the opposite approaches
in the Los Angeles and San Francisco central business districts. For a concert hall
downtown, Los Angeles requires, as a minimum, 50 times more parking spaces than
San Francisco allows as its maximum. This
difference helps to explain why downtown
San Francisco is much more exciting than
downtown Los Angeles.
If physicians in one city prescribed
bloodletting and physicians in another city
prescribed blood transfusion to treat the
same disease, everybody would demand
to know what is going on. Nobody notices
when Los Angles requires parking and San
Francisco restricts it. Ultimately, minimum
parking requirements increase traffic
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AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION | page 4

1,000

Auction House

1,000

6,600

Skating Rink

1,000

6,600

Dance Hall

1,000

8,250

Restaurant

1,000

8,250

Land Use
Donald Shoup, faicp

1,650

Animal Grooming

0

1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000 9,000 10,000
Square Feet
Building Area

Parking Area

Figure 2. Required ratios of building-to-parking area for select uses in
San Jose, California.

because all the cars drawn to the required
parking spaces clog the roads. Los Angeles
has more parking spaces per square mile
and worse traffic congestion than any other
city in the United States. Minimum parking
requirements began as a solution but have
become the problem, a disease masquerading as a cure.
If planners assume that every new
resident will come with a car, they require
developers to provide enough off-street
parking to house all the cars. Ample free
parking then ensures that most residents
do want a car. Parking requirements thus
result from a self-fulfilling prophecy. Parking requirements increase the number of
cars, and planners then use the large number of cars to justify the need for higher
parking requirements.
Planners often use “motivated reasoning” to justify the parking requirements
required by elected officials who want
enough parking to ensure that citizens
won’t yell about a shortage of free parking. Planners must then fashion arguments
for conclusions already reached. Assumptions are the starting point of most parking
requirements, and the person who makes
the assumptions determines the outcome. Instead of reasoning about parking

requirements, planners rationalize them and
feign expertise they do not have.
When it comes to parking requirements,
planners have used Pandora’s box as their
toolkit. These requirements result from
complex political and economic forces, and
planners are not in full control. But they do
enable the pseudoscience, and the public
bears the cost.
Every Sin Is Forgiven if It Is Done With
Our Permission
When a city requires off-street parking, city
officials have something to offer developers—a planning variance that reduces the
parking requirement. The city can then allow
a business to provide fewer than the required
number of parking spaces because of special
circumstances. Some planners may believe
that minimum parking requirements are
needed as a bargaining chip because they
enable cities to reduce the parking requirements in exchange for community benefits,
such as affordable housing. For example,
California requires cities to reduce the
parking requirements for residential developments that include a specific share of
affordable housing units. Reducing parking
requirements as an inducement to provide
affordable housing shows how unnecessary

the parking requirements are in the first
place. Cities would never reduce the code
requirements for safe electrical wiring or fire
escapes in exchange for affordable housing
units, but they can easily bargain away parking because it is obviously not necessary.
Just as the medieval Catholic Church
sold indulgences for the remission of sins,
cities can sell planning variances for the
remission of parking requirements. In
Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov,
the Grand Inquisitor of Seville explained
why the Church was popular even though it
threatened Hell as the punishment for minor
sins: “Every sin will be forgiven if it is done
with our permission.” Removing minimum
parking requirements will remove the temptation to sell variances that allow sinfully
few parking spaces.
How can cities remove their minimum
parking requirements and still have the
bargaining power the requirements provide?
They can establish maximum parking limits and allow developers to provide more
spaces if they pay a fee for every space they
provide above the limit. I do not recommend
establishing parking maximums to use as
a bargaining tool with developers. Nevertheless, if cities want to use parking as a
bargaining tool, it is much better to bargain
from the starting point of maximum limits
than of minimum requirements.
THE UPSIDE OF MINIMUM
PARKING REQUIREMENTS
The upside of parking requirements is that
removing them can do so much good. Figure 1 showed the asphalt desert created by
excessive parking in Silicon Valley. What
would happen if San Jose removed off-street
parking requirements, charged demandbased prices for on-street parking, and used
the resulting revenue to improve neighborhood public services? Property owners
might decide their land is more valuable for
housing than for parking. If a city wants more
housing and less traffic, removing off-street
parking requirements will help.
Everyone in Silicon Valley complains
about expensive housing, long commutes,
congested traffic, and polluted air. Building
housing on the periphery of parking lots
would help to solve all these problems.
Figure 3 suggests what could happen if
San Jose removed parking requirements
and allowed housing on the periphery of

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AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION | page 5

Stuart Cohen, TransForm

Figure 3. The same office park from Figure 1, digitally altered to illustrate how
removing parking requirements could result in liner apartment buildings on
previously developed sites.

parking lots. A parking lot can easily be
redeveloped because it has a single owner,
has no demolition costs, does not require
new infrastructure, and is near both jobs
and shopping. If apartment buildings
fronted the sidewalks, anyone walking,
biking, or driving by would see a real city.
The smartest way to travel is to be near your
destination already, and this job-adjacent
housing would allow commuters to walk to
work—a rare out-of-car experience.
The housing can be built without new
parking because the existing spaces can be
shared between office buildings and apartments. To avoid a parking shortage, the cost
of parking will have to be separated from
the rent for apartments and offices, so only
drivers pay for parking. Residents who work
in a nearby office building may find they can
live with only one or even no car. They will
have the option to rent an apartment without
paying for two parking spaces, an option
that parking requirements now forbid. The
new housing cannot cause gentrification or
displacement because no one lives on the
parking lots now. Converting parking spaces
into housing sites will also reduce traffic congestion because more people will walk, bike,
carpool, or ride transit to their destinations.
Oversized parking lots offer the possibility of something much better, but parking

requirements prevent anything else. The
asphalt landscape in too much of America is
not walkable, beautiful, or sustainable, but it
can be reformed and transformed.
Removing parking requirements can
produce a cascade of benefits: shorter commutes, less traffic, a healthier economy, a
cleaner environment, and more affordable
housing. If we reform our misguided planning, vast parking lots can evolve into real
communities. Economic objectives often
conflict with environmental objectives, but
parking reforms can serve both.
The money we now spend on cars and
fuel can be spent on other things. Cars
and fuel are often imported, but we cannot
import apartment buildings. Spending less
for cars, fuel, and parking and spending
more for housing will increase the demand
for labor in a host of professions, such as
architects, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and roofers. Importing fewer cars and
hiring more people to build infill development will boost the whole economy.
Some critics argue that removing an
off-street parking requirement amounts
to “social engineering” and a “war on
cars.” Instead, off-street parking requirements are a war for cars. All the required
parking spreads buildings apart so more
people need cars to get around. Removing

a requirement that restaurants provide 10
parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of floor
area is no more a war on cars than removing a requirement that everyone must eat in
restaurants 10 times a month would be a war
on restaurants.
When it comes to off-street parking, I’m
pro-choice. Cities should not require developers to provide unwanted parking spaces.
Parking requirements were a bad idea,
poorly executed, and they prevent many
good results. Figure 3 shows that an upside
of the mess we have made is an accidental
land reserve available for job-adjacent housing. If cities remove their unwise parking
requirements, we can reclaim land on a scale
that will rival the Netherlands.
Cities have three good reasons to
remove minimum parking requirements: We
can’t afford them, we don’t need them, and
they do immense harm. Wishing that parking
requirements did not exist, however, is not a
strategy for removing them. Parking requirements respond to a real problem, but they
are the wrong solution. And cities cannot
remove their parking requirements without
also better managing on-street parking. If
cities manage on-street parking properly,
they won’t need to require off-street parking.
Information wants to be free, but parking
wants to be paid for.
PROOF IT CAN BE DONE
When The High Cost of Free Parking was
published, half the city planning profession thought I was crazy and the other half
thought I was daydreaming. Since then,
several cities—including Buffalo, New York;
Hartford, Connecticut; Minneapolis, and San
Francisco—have removed all parking requirements, and many others have removed their
downtown requirements. Mexico City has
converted its minimum parking requirements
into maximum parking limits while leaving
the numbers almost unchanged. What once
seemed politically impossible may slowly
become the new normal.
For example, in July 2019, Houston
nearly doubled the size of its downtown offstreet parking exemption area, redefining
it as a “market-based parking area” (§26471(b)(6) & §26-472). In this area, developers
decide how much parking to provide, and
at least one shopping center developer has
already decided to provide a public plaza
instead of more parking (DiMiceli 2019).
ZONINGPRACTICE 2.20

AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION | page 6

CONCLUSION
Assembling support for parking reform is
like opening a combination lock: each small
turn of the dial seems to achieve nothing, but
when everything is in place the lock opens.
Three reforms can open the parking combination lock: (1) remove off-street parking
requirements, (2) charge market prices for
on-street parking, and (3) spend the revenue
for neighborhood public services.
Repealing off-street parking requirements and replacing them with market prices
for on-street parking may at first glance seem
a Herculean task, almost like Prohibition
or the Reformation, too big an upheaval for
society to accept. Nevertheless, this strategy
should attract voters across a wide political spectrum. Conservatives will see that it
reduces government regulations. Liberals
will see that it increases public spending.
Environmentalists will see that it reduces

READINGS
DiMiceli, Vince. 2019. “Houston May
Soon Not Have a Problem With Parking.”
Streetsblog USA, September 19.
Available at http://bit.ly/39Y85hW.
Gabbe , C.J., and Gregory Pierce. 2017.
“Hidden Costs and Deadweight Losses:
Bundled Parking and Residential Rents
in the Metropolitan United States,”
Housing Policy Debate, 27(2): 219–229.
Available at http://bit.ly/2sbaxR2.
Shoup, Donald, and Don Pickrell. 1978.
“Problems with Parking Requirements
in Zoning Ordinances.” Traffic Quarterly,
32(4): 545–563. Available at http://bit.
ly/3a2nMov.
Shoup, Donald. 1995. “An Opportunity
to Reduce Minimum Parking
Requirements.” Journal of the American
Planning Association, 61(1): 14–28.
Available at http://bit.ly/2Tb9SKx.
Shoup, Donald. 1999. “The Trouble
with Minimum Parking Requirements,”
Transportation Research Part A, 33A
(7–8): 549–574. Available at http://bit.
ly/2NchnNs.

energy consumption, air pollution, and carbon emissions. Urban designers will see that
it enables people to live at higher density
without being overrun by cars. Developers will see that it reduces building costs.
Residents will see that it improves their
neighborhood public services. Drivers of all
political stripes will see that it guarantees
convenient curb parking. Elected officials
will see that it depoliticizes parking, reduces
traffic congestion, allows infill development,
and provides public services without raising
taxes. Finally, planners can devote less time
to parking and more time to improving cities.
Repealing off-street parking requirements, charging the right prices for on-street
parking, and using revenue to provide public
services will improve cities, the economy,
and the planet, one parking space at a time.
Cities will look and work much better when
prices, not planners and politicians, govern

Shoup, Donald. 2005. Chapter 1. “The
21st Century Parking Problem.” In The
High Cost of Free Parking. Chicago:
Planners Press. Available at http://bit.
ly/2tNSn8i.

decisions about the number of parking
spaces. Like the automobile itself, parking is
a good servant but a bad master.
Note: This piece is adapted from the
Introduction to Parking and the City, published by Routledge in 2018.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donald Shoup, faicp, is Distinguished
Research Professor in the Department of
Urban Planning at UCLA. His research has
focused on how parking policies affect cities,
the economy, and the environment. Shoup is
a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified
Planners and an Honorary Professor at the
Beijing Transportation Research Center. In
2015, he received APA’s National Excellence
Award for a Planning Pioneer.

Cover: istock.com/Alex Potemkin

VOL. 37, NO. 2

Shoup, Donald. 2013. “On-Street
Parking Management or Off-Street
Parking Requirements.” ACCESS, Spring.
Available at http://bit.ly/35D1lCF
Shoup, Donald. 2014. “The High Cost
of Minimum Parking Requirements.” in
Parking: Issues and Policies. Bingley,
United Kingdom: Emerald Group
Publishing. Available at http://bit.
ly/2R4sI3l.
Shoup, Donald. 2016. “Cutting the
Cost of Parking Requirements.”
ACCESS, Spring. Available at http://bit.
ly/2Nfamvi.
Shoup, Donald, ed. 2018. Parking and
the City. New York: Routledge. Preview
available at http://bit.ly/30b8JUB.

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ZONINGPRACTICE 2.20

AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION | page 7

DOES YOUR ZONING FOLLOW
THE PSEUDOSCIENCE OF
PARKING MINIMUMS?
205 N. Michigan Ave.
Suite 1200
Chicago, IL 60601–5927

AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION

ZONING PRACTICE

Creating Great Communities for All

Trustee Memo

Meeting Date: 8/3/2026
Memo Date:

7/30/2026

To:

Village Board

From:

Trustees Chris Stoa and JP Villavicencio

Subject:

Mandatory Parking Minimum Requirements

Background/Overview​
The Village of Cottage Grove currently mandates minimum parking mandatory requirements,
which vary with different land uses.
Requiring more parking spaces than a property is reasonably expected to need can increase
development costs, consume developable land, add impervious surface, and create barriers to
redevelopment or changes in use. These costs may ultimately be reflected in rents, home
prices, commercial leases, or the price of goods and services. For these reasons, mandatory
parking minimum requirements are on their way out in many communities across the country.
Purpose​
The purpose of this agenda item is to recommend that mandatory minimum parking
requirements be removed from Village Code. Mandatory minimum parking requirements can
increase development costs, create barriers for small businesses, consume developable land,
and contribute to lower density development patterns.
In many cases, decisions about the appropriate amount of parking can be left to property
owners and developers based on expected demand. Many traditional parking ratios were
developed using generalized assumptions and national guidance rather than observed parking
demand within an individual community. As a result, required parking may not always reflect the
actual needs of a particular property, business, neighborhood, or land use, wasting land that
could be put to effective use as well as contributing to increasing sprawl
This is NOT a ban on parking. This is NOT telling anyone they need to have fewer parking
spots. This is NOT telling anyone they must develop something on their property. This is simply
the Village removing themselves from decisions best left to property owners. Developers,
businesses, and residents would still be free to build as much parking as they deem necessary
to attract customers or renters, which is something within their area of expertise and generally
outside the area expertise of municipalities. All this would do is simply prevent developers from
having to build more parking space than they may want or need.

Trustee Memo
Small businesses may benefit from greater flexibility to open, expand, or reuse existing
properties. In some cases, parking mandates can require the purchase or dedication of
additional land that could otherwise support the business itself.
More flexible parking standards can also support more efficient land use and help limit sprawl.
Using land for housing, businesses, landscaping, or other productive purposes rather than
excess parking can reduce impervious surface and help preserve farmland and open space at
the edges of the community.
Existing institutions and property owners could benefit as well. A church, nonprofit, or other
community organization operating with limited resources may find that an expansion or change
in use triggers additional parking requirements that make a project more difficult or unaffordable.
Allowing property owners to determine the amount of parking appropriate for their actual needs
could help older properties adapt, expand, and remain productive over time.
Starting to modernize our Village code before the Comprehensive Plan update not only will bring
us more into line with 21st century practices, but it will also give GRAEF a good foundation to
build off of so that they can get a better understanding of where the Village is headed.
Trustee Request/Recommendation
Direct staff to draft language to remove minimum parking requirements in Village Code; place a
discussion item on next Plan Commission agenda to make them aware of an upcoming Public
Hearing on the matter after the language is drafted.