There is a movement afoot in the U.S. for some cities and now even states eliminating parking lot minimums when it comes to new development or redevelopment projects. California has now officially banned parking minimums.
Given the high cost of development and land, this makes sense to allow the developers to put more toward the building itself rather than allocate additional space for parking to meet an arbitary requirement by a city or county council. That said, America hasn’t given up cars yet and people still need parking. It will be interesting to see how this evolves over time.
I can imagine that some developments will scale back too much and word will get out that those developments are hard to get in and out of and may deter customers from showing up. I guess we’ll see how this goes. My guess is we won’t have a good read on this for at least 10 years.
