Beyond Parking Mandates
Data and Insights on the Growing Movement to Break Free from Parking Mandates
For decades, little-known rules in local zoning codes have been reshaping cities around cars. Requirements that every new home or business have a pre-determined number of parking spaces have inflated housing costs, killed small businesses, and made our most charming and historic Main Streets illegal to build today. Many of those mandatory parking spaces hardly even get used.
That’s why policymakers across Cascadia are leading the way to erase these outdated rules, restoring the rights of property owners and allowing towns to gradually become more walkable over the years. Parking reform has spread across the snowy suburbs of Anchorage, Alaska to the halls of Oregon’s capitol where policymakers adopted state-level prohibitions of parking mandates in 2022.
Sightline’s new series picks up where Parking? Lots! left off a decade ago: reporting on the surging bipartisan movement to roll back parking mandates, and sharing new data and insights from jurisdictions that have already made this policy change.
New to parking minimums? Our friends at Strong Towns included our reporting on Fayetteville’s parking reform in its excellent explainer video:
for Policymakers
Report: The State of Parking Mandates in Washington
Minimum parking requirements are paving over Washington, regardless of how much parking residents or businesses actually need.
Accessible Parking
Meeting mobility needs while reducing parking requirements
Snow Removal
Parking policies from 3 snow-prone cities
Parking Flexibility for Housing Affordability
How counting already-existing spaces can unlock more homes.
2023 Statewide Legislation
Proposals from across the US to reduce overbuilt parking lots
Podcasts
REPORT: The State of Parking Mandates in Washington
The State of Parking Mandates in Washington
Minimum parking requirements are paving over Washington, regardless of how much parking residents or businesses actually need.
Washington’s Most Parking-Burdened Towns and Cities
A new Sightline report details the arcane, arbitrary, and pernicious rules blocking homes and businesses across the state.
Research and Analysis
Twice As Many Small Towns Have Eliminated Parking Mandates As Large Cities
Three hometown stories show why parking reform is for everyone.
Bellingham’s Parking Reform Pilot Pays Off
Old Town’s first new building project has more than double the number of homes and less parking than the city’s old code would have allowed. The rest of the city might follow suit.
Unlock Middle Housing with Parking Reform
As long as parking is required, smaller, lower-cost homes are still illegal.
How Parking Ratios Kill Homes
A string of mistakes in one city shows how easily local rules can turn arbitrary and destructive.
With Flexibility Over Parking, Oregon Homebuilders Get to Work
Tens of thousands of homes are now more buildable, including several projects now resurrected that local parking mandates had previously killed.
One in Three Garages Has No Car in It
You can build it, but they won’t park there.
No Minimum Parking Requirements? No Problem for Fayetteville, Arkansas
Six years into its deregulation experiment, a growing city thrives without parking mandates.
Parking Reform Legalized Most of the New Homes in Buffalo and Seattle
Studies from two very different cities showed the same result.
Anchorage Assembly Unites to End Parking Mandates
Progressives and conservatives find common ground on easing regulations on housing and business development.
To Stop Building Heat Islands, Stop Overbuilding Parking Lots
Parking lots amplify high temperatures. Why are we still requiring them to be larger than they need to be?
Get monthly updates from our Housing + Urbanism team, including the latest parking reform research
Follow Catie Gould, Senior Transportation Researcher, at @Citizen_Cate
Follow Michael Andersen, Senior Housing Researcher and Transportation Lead, at @andersem
In summer 2022, both Oregon and California took statewide action to roll back minimum off-street parking requirements, relegalizing homes and businesses regardless of how many parking spots they have. Catie Gould and Jeannette Lee present to Portland State University’s Transportation Research and Education Center on why parking reform is so important, what to expect next in Oregon, and lessons from cities like Anchorage, Alaska, that have already gone all the way to delete this regulation from their zoning code.
Slides from the discussion available here.
