For urban planners, parking rules established decades ago have become a contentious 21st-century issue, write University of Buffalo urban planning professors Daniel Baldwin Hess and Jeffrey Rehler in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Parking takes up about one-third of land area in U.S. cities, and nationwide, there are an estimated eight parking spaces for every car.
Cities are now facing pressure to rethink parking. Zoning laws in America typically require one parking space per apartment, but in 2017, Buffalo became the first U.S. city to stop requiring a minimum amount of parking. Research has since found that Buffalo’s so-called ‘Green Code’ has led to local leaders seeking to reenergise the urban core and prioritise public transport.
“Zoning is just one piece of a larger urban design puzzle that also must factor in location, market demand for parking, and land use priorities,” writes the article. It continues that the parking reform is gaining momentum. In May, Minneapolis became another city to remove minimum parking requirements for new developments as part of its climate and greenhouse gas emission goals. San Diego, Salt Lake City and Raleigh, N.C. are among the cities considering a similar change.
“In the future, U.S. cities could look quite different, designed for citizens rather than parked cars,” say the authors.
