From wasteful parking mandates to flexible communities with more homes, greener spaces, and vibrant streets.
From wasteful parking mandates to flexible communities with more homes, greener spaces, and vibrant streets.
Mandatory parking minimums are hidden rules that force developers to build expensive parking, whether it's needed or not. This has real costs for everyone.
Required parking can increase the cost of a new home by over $100,000. In Boston, we've been permitting more new off-street parking (homes for cars) than housing units.
Vast parking lots trap heat, make stormwater flooding worse, and use up valuable space where we could have trees, parks, or more housing.
These rules make it impossible to build vibrant, walkable main streets. They make it hard to start or expand small businesses, hurting our neighborhood fabric.
End outdated zoning rules that force new developments to include a set number of off-street parking spaces. This simple change lowers housing costs, gives designers flexibility, and reduces car dependency.
Promote demand-based strategies like paid residential permits, shared parking agreements, and better enforcement. These tools prioritize access and reduce chaos without building wasteful, empty lots.
"From an affordability and access perspective, larger parking minimums force buyers and renters to pay for parking spaces they may not want or need, which could cause would-be buyers and renters to be unable to afford to live in a particular area. Parking mandates can also decrease the number of housing units in a development, thereby reducing access through fewer units."
💰 📉"In Amsterdam, some street parking has become urban forest; in Paris, entire blocks outside schools have been repurposed as social spaces for kids. All that is possible in U.S. cities too. But first leaders must legalize the type of parking-lite, high-density housing that makes it possible for a neighborhood to be vibrant, walkable, and economically served by mass transit."
🚶➡️ 🏙️"Reducing the amount of parking in urban spaces can also greatly improve the quality of urban landscapes... lower automobile use per capita helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from cars around population centers. Additionally, decreasing the amount of built infrastructure like parking and roads can reduce the heat island effect."
🌳 🏃♀️We need your voice to help build support for these reforms!