ABSTRACT
Planners and urban critics who regularly call for increased density as a salve for city life should realize that without corresponding changes in parking requirements, increased density will compound, rather than solve, the problems authors associate with sprawl. The impact of parking requirements becomes clearer when authors compare the parking requirements of three cities. Without doubt, the cities of New York and San Francisco are denser than the city of Los Angeles. But sprawl is a regional attribute, and Los Angeles has much denser suburbs than New York or San Francisco. More important, if off-street parking is required, as it is in many cities, then it becomes rational for firms to locate in places where land is less expensive, meaning it becomes rational to locate outside the central business district (CBD). In order to thrive, a CBD must receive a critical mass of people every day but do so without clogging itself to the point of paralysis.
