ABSTRACT
Parking requirements could, obstruct infill development, affordable development, and neighborhood redevelopment. Minimum parking requirements can make it difficult to build housing for certain people, on certain parcels, in certain buildings, or in certain neighborhoods. Cities thrive when they offer more rather than fewer choices; cities that remove parking requirements will create more diverse and inclusive housing markets, and become more diverse and inclusive places. The logic suggests that if cities remove parking requirements, they will encourage more and more varied housing. In 1999, Los Angeles put this idea to the test by enacting an Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (ARO) for its downtown. The ARO was designed to convert vacant commercial buildings into housing. Downtown land is expensive, its parcels are often small and irregular, and its buildings frequently cover their entire lots. In these situations, any on-site parking must be subterranean or structured, which is always expensive and sometimes physically impossible.
