204
submitted 10 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 50 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This sounds like it was pushed for by the development companies, not environmentalists. If this does anything except lower costs for businesses, I'll eat my shoe.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 40 points 10 months ago

A lot of local urbanist groups have been pushing for this for a long time. Parking minimums were largely made up by pulling numbers out of hats in the 50s and have essentially no basis in empirical fact. Countless small businesses all across the countries exist in buildings that could not legally be built today because of parking minimums. I remember a story from a small Arkansas town about some local entrepreneurs that wanted to open a cafe in a vacant downtown building, but couldn't because they'd need to buy the adjacent building and bulldoze it to make a parking lot in order to meet parking minimums.

These also apply to residential buildings as well. If someone is wanting to build a medium sized apartment building in an older pre-war walkable area near a train station, but modern parking minimums require buying 3x the land in order to build a parking lot, that building isn't going to happen, meaning that new housing units aren't being built and thus there'll be more price pressure on existing housing.

Not to mention, denser housing allows for fewer cars and more transit, which in an absolute boon for the environment. There's a reason why suburbs emit way way more CO2 per capita that downtown areas.

[-] sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 10 months ago

I ran the numbers once; If a 1300 ft^2 house (~130 m^2) were classified as a business, it would require 4-5 parking spaces. The land used by parking ends up being equal to half the area of the building.

[-] Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 23 points 10 months ago

Environmentalists are very much in favor of getting rid of these parking minimums. The sprawling endless mega stores, impossible to walk between with massive parking lots that are never even close to filled but taking up valuable space all come from these policies. They were originally heavily pushed by auto makers on the basis of pretty much zero evidence. Less parking lots will create denser neighborhoods that are more walkable, bikeable, and improve both the efficiency and use of public transit. There will be more things nearby, lessening the need for cars or travel for simple errands to begin with. Many downtowns have been strangled by these requirements, becoming parking lot ghost towns that barely anyone lives in, killing local businesses in the end.

Here's an environmentalist take on the issue if you don't mind a video:

https://youtu.be/OUNXFHpUhu8?si=QlIPRBNk-nG7Ha5J

[-] SuiXi3D@kbin.social 18 points 10 months ago

It’ll mean folks working or living at a lot of places won’t have a place to park, and without further investment into rail, bus, and bike infrastructure it means that a lot of folks simply won’t be able to work or live where they need to.

On paper, this means denser development all around. But living in most of these places requires owning a vehicle. That means you gotta have somewhere to put it. Otherwise, you’ve gotta provide alternate means for folks to get to where they need to go. Expanded bus service, more light rail, and better and more bike trails are essential.

[-] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 points 10 months ago

If it gets rid of the minimums, I'm not complaining.

[-] Cheers@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

I think the bigger part is it lowers the barrier to entry for others.

There are spots where, if I wanted to build a 10 br apartment complex, I'd have to have a 20 space parking lot. That means I either need more land or more construction for a parking deck. Expand that out to 100/200 units and you can quickly see where this becomes a barrier.

Not to mention, this further necessitates parking because now my nearest neighbor is further away, which could have simply been a bar or grocery store.

Now I'm not someone that can afford to build something that big, but I wouldn't be surprised to see new builders move into the market.

this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
204 points (99.0% liked)

News

23275 readers
3451 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS