ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the prevalence, scale, and inconsistency of parking requirements in the United States (US) by comparing the code minimums for five common land uses in the 50 largest cities in America. Parking minimums for places of worship are commonly based on the number of seats in the sanctuary, many cities have a backup requirement that is usually stated in terms of square footage in the main assembly space. Denver apparently believes that its citizens demand above-average amounts of parking at high schools while needing well below the average at churches. When it comes to office parking requirements, there is huge variation from city to city—ranging from zero to 400 spaces for buildings of the same size. Most white-collar workers in the US pass the hours from nine to five in offices or cubicles smaller than the spaces where cars spend their days.
