It's time to eliminate all parking minimums in the City of Atlanta!
Big thanks to Councilmember Jason Dozier for introducing legislation to eliminate parking minimums citywide in Atlanta at this week's City Council meeting!!
This is a great proposal. Several U.S. cities have eliminated parking minimums in the past few years as a means of lower housing costs, improving land use, and lifting up other forms of transportation that are more fitting for walkable neighborhoods.
This doesn't mean "end all parking," it means letting communities and developers jointly decide what works for a property instead of having the City force an often arbitrary minimum number of spaces in.
If approved, the change would be worked into the city's zoning rewrite, dubbed ATL Zoning 2.0. You can see the current state of the rewrite here:
Atlanta operates with legacy zoning. Help us develop Version 2.0 to meet the new world challenges and aspirations of a 21st century city.
Chicago reduces parking mandates in transit-served neighborhoods, takes effect in September 2025!
The Chicago City Council adopted O2025-0015577 — introduced by 1st Ward Alderperson La Spata — today that eliminates parking mandates for a.
From the article:
To recap the Connected Communities ordinance, transit-served locations are properties within 1,320 feet of specific CTA bus corridors (the zoning code lists them), or within 2,640 feet of CTA rail station entrances or exits, or within 2,640 feet of Metra station entrances or exits.
This information is subject to change because the final passed version has not yet been published.
The two big outcomes are:
the requirement to get an “administrative adjustment” for providing zero parking is eliminated, except in downtown
the option to provide zero parking is extended to RS and RT zoning districts for the first time (these zoning districts are where the majority of detached houses and 2-to-6 flats exist and get built)
These two changes mean that more housing can get permitted faster, or permitted in the first place, because parking will no longer be a “binding constraint” for new and rehabbed residential uses in transit-served areas.
Progress on parking minimums is slow, but still much appreciated
Good news! The elimination of parking minimums for all housing, all offices, and some retail development near the Beltline seems sure to be approved by Atlanta City Council, thanks to a proposed ordinance that's successfully making its way through the process.
(I say 'some retail' because minimum parking requirements will still be applicable for "Commercial Food Preparation. Delivery-based commercial kitchens, and Eating and Drinking Establishments which shall be determined by the underlying zoning.")
It was approved by the Zoning Review Board last week, and has gotten approval from most NPUs.
This doesn't make new parking illegal near the Beltline (in what's defined as the Beltline Overlay zoning district). It simply means that the city isn't requiring new parking supply through local law. The only pressure now will be from the developers themselves.
And given that we've had no requirements for parking minimums in Midtown and Downtown and elsewhere near MARTA rail for decades, yet tons of parking has been built there, this elimination of mandated parking is largely a win on principal: we shouldn't be adding pressure from local government on increase in parking supply in cities.
To be truly bold, we'll need to reduce the numbers on the amount of parking that's allowed to be built (maximums). That's a battle for another day.
Is this proposed ordinance as progressive as the more comprehensive elimination of parking minimums that we've seen in some other cities in recent years? No, but by Atlanta standards this is very encouraging. Special thanks to Council's Jason Dozier for leading on this.
Plus 5 tips for repealing parking minimums in your community.
I never thought about parking minimums until my favorite pizza place was getting knocked down. A local bank was building a new three-story headquarters across the street and the city of Sandpoint, Idaho’s parking laws required that the bank either provide around 200 additional parking spaces around their new building or pay $10,000 per space in lieu of providing them.
Weighing the options, it was actually cheaper for the bank to purchase the surrounding properties, kick out the existing businesses, knock down the structures, and build parking. So the small pizza stand with the best slices in town closed and was removed.
But that only accounted for a small portion of the parking the bank required. To satisfy the city’s parking requirements, they were eyeing Monarch Mountain Coffee, a community gathering place next door to the new parking lot that was the former home of the pizza stand. Knocking down the local coffee shop, though, would still fall short of the city’s parking requirements and the bank would further have to acquire and demolish multiple other neighboring buildings that were currently used for housing and other small businesses.
All of this was happening in the middle of Sandpoint’s historic downtown. The city’s large public parking lot was only a block away! It was never completely full (not even on Black Friday).
[...]
It took a while to build enough support – and it was still contentious—but we managed to pass a series of reforms to Sandpoint’s parking requirements. We eliminated minimum parking requirements in Downtown Sandpoint entirely. Everywhere else in the city—for both commercial and residential uses—we greatly reduced them. And, finally, we set parking maximums to prevent even larger empty lots from damaging our community’s economy and quality of life.
The positive impacts were felt almost immediately. A popular Mexican restaurant was able to complete a long delayed expansion that, before the changes, would have cost them more in “in lieu of parking” fees than construction costs. Another restaurant turned their unused off-street parking spaces into additional outdoor seating in the summer. When a big box grocery store moved to town a little while later, the parking maximums left room for other small businesses and housing to also develop around them. And, by the way, they still had plenty of parking.
It became clear pretty quickly that parking minimums had never been protecting us from some dangerous world where no one could park their cars. The market actually wanted to provide more than enough (thus the maximums). In the end, parking minimums themselves were revealed to be the problem. And when we got rid of them, our businesses and community were allowed to gently, incrementally grow; creating more of the same kinds of places we used to build and still loved.
In Kansas City, zoning code requires 20 parking spaces for every 1000 square feet of building, meaning only about 15-20% of the site can be used for its actual function.
This is a map of how much space is devoted to parking in KC:
This week, we’re talking about phonics, parking minimums, and p-romance manga. (P-romance manga isn’t actually a thing. I just wanted three things that started with P.)
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SYR Common Councilor Pushes to end ‘Parking Minimums’
By Zach Lang SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News)– Common Councilor Michael Greene has made it his own objective to stop the expansion of parking spots with new flat edifices in the city of Syracuse.
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Zoning laws require new structures outside of Downtown Syracuse to develop parking spots amid the building procedure. Elements for the particular number of spaces incorporate the region of the building and motivation behind the building. Greene's primary spotlight is on loft structures, which require at least one parking spot to be worked for each flat inside the complex.
Greene trusts all the more parking areas and carports in the city are superfluous. Rather, he trusts space would profit the city increasingly if utilized for all the more lodging edifices or organizations. A diminishing inaccessible part would likewise push for urban nationals to utilize elective types of transportation like bicycles, transports, or simply strolling.
"What I'm not attempting to do is tell somebody they can't manufacture stopping," Greene said. "What I'm stating is we're not going to constrain you to construct stopping."
While the zoning laws are still in actuality, a case of Greene's proposition can be found at The Marshall close Syracuse University. The building is as yet being developed simply behind Marshall Street, however doing as such without the expansion of new parking spots. Rather, staff are proposing to future occupants with autos to investigate the University's stopping framework or the adjacent Sheraton parking structure.
The condo complex should add 223 spaces as indicated by the zoning laws. Notwithstanding, the Syracuse Planning Commission voted consistently to wave the necessity.
"Somebody may manufacture a condo complex ideal alongside a travel line or ideal beside a school or somebody's work and they may state 'Hello, the kind of client we will draw in needn't bother with stopping,'" Greene said. "Consequently, we shouldn't have to construct it."
Americans can’t afford the high cost of parking requirements
Americans can’t afford the high cost of parking requirements
Building a single parking spot can easily cost more than many Americans’ life savings. In the latest issue of Access Magazine, retired UCLA economist Donald Shoup brings this point home to illustrate the huge financial burden imposed by minimum parking requirements, especially for poor households.
The average construction cost of structured parking, across 12 American cities, is $24,000 for an…
