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submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

The city council in Austin, Texas recently proposed something that could seem like political Kryptonite: getting rid of parking minimums.

Those are the rules that dictate how much off-street parking developers must provide — as in, a certain number of spaces for every apartment and business.

Around the country, cities are throwing out their own parking requirements – hoping to end up with less parking, more affordable housing, better transit, and walkable neighborhoods.

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[-] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

I think in some ways this will further separate the urban from the rural. Basically everyone I know works hard to avoid businesses in cities that don't have easy parking when you have to drive in 30 miles or more to get to them. But then again, maybe for much larger cities it works, at the cost of there being different shopping and eating locations for people who live in the city within walking distance and those who need to drive. Not sure how much the "social mixing" actually helps cohesion given existing rural / urban divides, but I can see this leading to people who basically are even more in 2 completely different countries. Of course, IDK how you fix this - NYC has park and ride set up, but the vast majority of third tier cities do not, or run one bus (that no one who can possibly avoid it wants to ride) twice a day, one in and one out.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago

This isn't setting a parking maximum. It just says you don't have to build more parking than you feel like paying for. Businesses trying to attract people who drive will still be allowed to build enough parking for all their customers. However they won't have to pay for even more than they need which is often the case now. Many parking lots are half full on the busy days, so they can replace part of that lot with another business and better use that space and save money.

Of course businesses near downtown will probably decide most customers are not driving already (traffic is bad and parking is hard to find) so why not get rid of their parking lots completely to better serve their customers. However for every rural customer (who has to drive at least part way) lost several urban customers are gained so this is worth it for them.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Right, my point isn't that the businesses will die because there's no rural or suburban customers, it's that urban customers will less and less run into rural or suburban customers, leading to potentially way less interactions between different ways of life. I guess it probably doesn't matter if rural and suburban people shop at Wal-Mart and never see a bodega and the reverse is true for urbanites, but if you never meet in a bar or whatever it means even more social bubbles than we already have. I'm not sure the idea of off street parking minimums were a smart policy though.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

This is a change that needs to happen in junction with mixed use zoning, investments in public transit, and better development patterns in both urban and suburban environments to incentivise and allow people to comfortably make those trips without a car.

I do acknowledge that there will still be those who either insist on driving or don't currently have a reasonable alternative but don't think that our cities should be catering to them as much as they do right now with parking minimums.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

don’t think that our cities should be catering to them as much as they do right now with parking minimums.

I actually agree with this in general. I'd just like to see some more park and ride or nicer big parking garages in the small cities to acknowledge that anyone from the surrounding communities has to drive to get to the city and then needs to put that car somewhere while shopping, eating, whatever. Though for the park and ride we'd need a lot more bus service from there to the city, which I guess is hard to fund.

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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
207 points (99.1% liked)

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