Austin on Thursday became the largest city in the country to stop requiring new developments to have a set amount of parking — a move aimed at both fighting climate change and spurring more housing construction amid the city’s affordability crisis. The Austin City Council voted 8-2 Thursday to wipe out minimum parking requirements for virtually every kind of property citywide. That includes single-family homes, apartment buildings, offices and shopping malls. — The Texas Tribune
As noted by The Texas Tribune, housing advocates, developers, and climate activists have increasingly advocated for the erasure of parking requirements, which have been found to drive up housing costs and fuels a dependency on cars. Cities across the country in recent years, including Portland, Minneapolis, and San Jose, have taken similar actions to scale back requirements. In 2019, the L.A. City Planning Department released its Downtown Community Plan, called DTLA 2040, which included plans to eliminate parking requirements for all of downtown Los Angeles.
According to Austin City Council Member and the proposal’s author, Zohaib Qadri, keeping parking requirements contradicted the billions of dollars the city has set out to invest in its public transit system.
Opponents of the move worry that getting rid of parking requirements will redirect parking to nearby streets and intensify traffic. Developers, however, can still decide how much parking they need, and Austin will continue to require properties to build accessible parking spaces for people with disabilities. In addition to Austin, Dallas is reportedly considering ways to reduce parking requirements and even potentially eliminate them.
3 Comments
It's a super extra good incentive for developers of all sizes whose profitability depends on maxing the market rate sq. footage. Wow. I am really curious about the impact on the urban environment. Both negative and positive. This is like letting a medium-sized city to-go popcorn.
About time we get serious about curbing the automobile dominated environment that's ruining our environment, increasing loneliness, and adding an economic burden to those who can least afford it. Cities should be designed around the pedestrian, not the automobile.
Very interesting that Austin is the the first to implement this policy. I visited earlier this year-- a very cute city, but severely lacking in mass transit infrastructure compared to the Northeastern standard. Hopefully the public works department can keep pace with the housing developers in their rollout of new transit routes. Good luck to them!
P.S. Philadelphia--- take a hint!!!
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