How Parking Destroys Cities

For many new buildings across the world, there is a requirement that a certain number of parking spaces be included based on the number of potential tenants the building will hold. As urban planning professor Michael Manville argues, this parking requirement means buildings are a lot more costly to build and keep great projects from getting funded and approved. In LA, for example, out of the $274 million budget for building the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the underground parking structure cost nearly $100 million.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell:

“A commercial requirement of one parking space per 300 square feet means developers will put new retail in a car-friendly, pedestrian-hostile strip mall. And a requirement of one parking space per 100 square feet for restaurants means the typical eating establishment will devote three times as much space to parking as it will to dining.”

So how can we solve this? Manville suggests fixing this would be relatively simple: “it shouldn’t be illegal to put up a building without parking and market it to people without cars.”