A Minneapolis Councilwoman's Land-Use Masterstroke

Saw this quote in this article:

The Minneapolis policy, proposed by Council Member Lisa Bender, would eliminate all parking requirements for new residential units built within 350 feet, or about a block, of bus or rail service offering frequent, all-day service (every 15 minutes at midday). Within a quarter-mile of frequent bus service and a half-mile of frequent rail service, the policy change would eliminate all requirements for buildings with 50 or fewer housing units, and reduce them to one space per two units for projects larger than that. For developments within 350 feet of infrequent bus service—coming only 30 minutes at midday—the policy would reduce current parking requirements by 10 percent.

Mrs. Bender is truly brilliant. Not only is she proposing what is perhaps the most progressive parking reform in the country, she is doing so in such a way that ties parking to mass transit accessibility. IOW, the closer you are to mass transit, the less parking you need.

She isn't just proposing a law, she's proposing a template of a law. One that can easily be replicated anywhere with a good mass transit core.

For instance, if you applied a similar requirement here in Philadelphia, the scale of our core network is such that parking requirements would be waived entirely for the overwhelming majority of the inner city. It would look not dissimilar to Yonah Freemark's map of Chicago parking requirements.

Zoning and Transportation

A common criticism of zoning is its often-asinine parking requirements. Why, for example, should every new rowhome on an urban block have to have space for a vehicle--which in practice always means a garage? This emotional question is one which commonly initiates zoning reforms--yet, by the end of the process, community input from organizations who are continually worried about their neighborhoods' parking conditions--how hard it is to find a spot--will always ask for the re-inclusion of those exact same parking requirements, thereby frustrating the goals of transit activists, conservationists, New Urbanist planners, and others trying to shift the transportation mode share away from cars and more towards more sustainable modes, such as walking, biking, and mass transit.

To that end, the bonusing system of highest-density zones in many cities involves cutting parking requirements when alternative transportation access is included. This often comes in the forms of bike parking and/or access to local mass transit stations and concourses. In initial rezoning, these bonuses are structured such that they can potentially eliminate parking requirements altogether; yet after the community review process they come out so mangled they barely reduce parking, and hence promote alternative mode shares, at all.

Cap'n Transit today suggests a new approach: creation of zoning mirrors that either (a) eliminate parking or (b) promotes transit, by requiring a direct contribution to the local mass transit agency of roughly the amount it costs to add a garage. The full set of mirrors he suggests increases the number of possible zones, however, which would undermine another goal of zoning reform--reducing the number, and complexity, of zones to make the system more legible to both developers and community organizations.

When the use of mirrors is seen in light of this counter-demand, however, a new idea comes to mind: why not just rethink what we mean by parking requirements? For the provisioning of parking requirements is nothing more--and nothing less--than a policy meant to ensure transportation access to and from the site by the resident, patron, employee, whatever. It is thus intended to ensure economic access through the means of zoning. But the high autocentrism of the language--the way the requirements have been warped, either accidentally or deliberately--undercuts the aspiration behind providing this requirement in the first place. Parking requirements--instead of transportation access requirements--are an ossified remnant of the grand 1950s ideal that driving would be truly liberating.

The simpler way to offer what Cap'n Transit is suggesting is, thus, to simply offer a menu of different classes of transportation access instead of simply requiring parking. A developer could offer (a) parking to every unit or (b) a bike parking facility or (c) insurance of transit access via a grant to the local mass transportation agency to ensure a continuance of service, of roughly the per-unit cost of a garage or carport, or (d) a mix-and-match of the above options. Any options, by themselves, would be by right; mixing and matching would trigger a minor variance (to ensure that the percentages being allotted to each mode is in line with city mode-share desires). Transportation access requirements would then be built on the framework parking minimums offer, while superseding the detrimental effects, when scaled, those minimums create. It is also far simple to insert, and interpret, a transportation access table with different expectations and requirements pertaining to access of each mode at the beginning (or end) of the code, than it is to overstuff the code with reams of variant zones whose only purpose is to delineate different classes of transportation access.

Basics: Parking Requirements

Nearly every American zoning code takes minimum parking requirements for granted: every habitable structure has to have a minimum of so-and-so parking per unit (if residential) or square feet (if commercial or industrial). Yet this practice runs counter to international best practices. European cities, for example, are purposefully making themselves car-hostile. And changing thoughts on parking requirements are creating a patchwork in which some cities have parking minima and others parking maxima.

The major problem is that since 1950 American cities have seen auto access as a given; rather, its proper place is a luxury. Streets need to be there for service vehicles, but they don't need nearly as much space as they claim. (Japan, for example, proves that.) Automobiles are merely one mode out of many of transportation access--their usage is enforced when we create environments where there is no mass transit and other modes of personal transit (pedestrian, bike) are well-nigh suicidal, but their usage is also encouraged when we overbuild automotive infrastructure where there is great access via all other modes as well. European cities understand this. The idea of building an apartment building next to light rail, to take an example from the Times article, is reasonably urban (indeed, that is the root of transportation-oriented development), but by giving such a structure a massive parking deck for residents, you abrogate the development opportunities gained by being transit-oriented and instead merely make it transit-proximate. In an era where resources need to be shifted to better use less energy, providing a parking space per unit just doesn't make any sense.

TOD planning has helped bring about change--see places like Rosslyn, VA--but the reality is that with fewer resources we can put toward transportation better transportation planning is necessary. TOD is only an element in broader planning--and Philadelphia, and every city, for that matter, needs to start planning to ensure that every citizen has adequate transportation access to every mode, and an environment conducive to less energy-intensive modes of transportation and more gung-ho about more energy-intensive modes. In other words, the way we zone needs to make it easier to walk, ride a bike, or take the bus or train than drive.

To that end, along with the development and implementation of a 50-year transportation plan, such as Philadelphia2050, every metropolitan area in the U.S. needs to reconsider how it accommodates automobiles, through both roadway design and construction and planned transit access and network design--and through parking requirements. Parking minima should only be enacted in places where mass transit access in a 50-year timeframe is simply not a viable option, and zoning massing densities* complemented with a gradation of parking maxima relative to density, with the highest-density and closest-to-high-capacity-transit locales having no parking requirements whatsoever.** Ideally, this would be bundled with market-rate pricing of parking throughout the urban organism, such as what Market Urbanism suggests, and the complete-street/shared-space network I have previously described--a one-two punch that would effectively eliminate several hidden subsidies for cars in the urban cores and provide a long-term ridership base for mass transit and regional bike trails.
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* In either Euclidean or form-based frameworks.
** Philadelphia's new zoning code would have been trailblazing in enacting something not much different from this, but Center City neighborhood associations--particularly the perennial thorn-in-the-side LSNA--succeeded in having such progressive language removed from the bill, due to parking concerns. The idea that parking would be removed by removing cars from the road never seems to have been considered.