ABSTRACT
Off-street parking requirements are a house of cards and may be surprisingly easy to sweep away. In 2004, London replaced its minimum parking requirements with maximum parking limits. Minimum parking requirements are an outdated practice unmoored from theory, data, and objectives. Future planners may condemn off-street parking requirements and free on-street parking as severely as condemn the urban renewal disasters of the twentieth century. Given the high cost of required parking spaces and their harmful consequences, planners should not uncritically assume that the demand for free parking automatically justifies off-street parking requirements. Demand depends on price, but planners rarely think about what drivers pay for parking or what the required spaces cost. Cities use inclusionary zoning to require affordable housing, hiding its cost in the cost of market-rate housing.
