Ending Parking Minimums: How to Make the Case with Facts and Options
This week is our seventh annual #BlackFridayParking campaign. Each year, to show how wasteful parking minimums are, Strong Towns advocates like you post photos of parking lots that are half-empty, even on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. We’re doing things a bit differently this time around (because 2020)—but we still need you. Learn more about #BlackFridayParking and how to participate by visiting our #BlackFridayParking page.
Parking minimums are present in nearly every city and they might seem like a simple, harmless regulation, but they’re actually incredibly damaging for local business owners, small-scale developers, and pretty much anyone who wants to do something new in your city. They’re also harmful to your city’s tax base because they fill your neighborhoods with parking spaces instead of productive developments like homes and shops.
The good news is that city after city is working hard to end minimums and allow people to build only the parking they want or need. One of those cities is Edmonton, Alberta. We had the honor of hosting three impressive advocates on our webcast from Edmonton. Ashley Salvador (cofounder and president of the Canada Backyard Housing Association), Travis Fong (cofounder and vice chair of the Canada Backyard Housing Association) and Anne Stevenson (Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Right at Home Housing Society and former senior planner for the city of Edmonton) all played a big role in getting parking minimums removed in their city. As you’ll see in the recording below, they have a ton of wisdom to share about the process.
Here are some of the key insights Salvador, Fong and Stevenson brought to this conversation about getting rid of parking minimums once and for all:
Any town can get rid of parking minimums. Edmonton is a very typical car-centric North American city, and yet they built momentum to make a change to their parking requirements.
Parking is costing your city and your developers far more than it’s worth. In Edmonton, these advocates calculated that parking spaces cost anywhere from $7,000 to $20,000 per stall, depending on the type of parking structure (surface lot, underground, etc.). They also found that just 7% of parking lots in the city were achieving capacity on a given day.
Make your case with facts and options. In Edmonton, the team gathered the facts about parking costs and benefits, then presented them to the community, showing the different tradeoffs they make, depending on how much parking they require in their city. Salvador, Fong and Stevenson made it clear to the public and stakeholders that removing minimums did not mean getting rid of parking; it just meant letting the market decide the right amount of parking.
Parking is a surprisingly emotional issue. In the process of ending minimums, the team in Edmonton received plenty of pushback, especially from people within government who felt their expertise was being threatened. Empathy and patience were important tools throughout this process, and it was necessary to appeal to different sorts of concerns along the way.
Watch the full video here to learn from Salvador, Fong and Stevenson, and then get started on removing parking minimums in your city:
Cover image via Unsplash.