ABSTRACT
Minimum telephone requirements are a joke, but minimum parking requirements are real. Attempting to reduce peak-hour calls, some cities exempt the Central Business District from minimum telephone requirements, but developers continue to provide ample telephone capacity anyway, because it is available everywhere else and everyone has become accustomed to having it. Urban planners then consult the Institute of Telephone Engineers manual to set minimum telephone requirements that will satisfy the maximum telephone demand at hundreds of different land uses. Minimum telephone requirements differ wildly among cities, with no explanations asked or given. Minimum parking requirements have short-circuited the price system in the markets for both transportation and land, and have created many unintended but not unforeseeable consequences. Cities would look and work much better if prices rather than planners governed most decisions about the quantity of parking. Like the automobile itself, parking is a good servant, but a bad master.
