ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that parking requirements cause great harm: they subsidize cars, distort transportation choices, warp urban form, increase housing costs, burden low-income households, debase urban design, damage the economy, and degrade the environment. Off-street parking requirements thus have all the hallmarks of a great planning disaster. Parking requirements bundle the cost of parking spaces into the cost of dwelling units, and therefore shift the cost of parking a car into the cost of renting or owning a home-making cars more affordable but housing more expensive. Richard Willson conducted case studies of parking demand and supply at suburban office projects in 10 Southern California cities and used the data to estimate how parking requirements affect land values and development density. In the Oakland case study, for example, a parking requirement of only one space per dwelling unit reduced housing density by 30 percent, and most cities now have higher parking requirements.
