Ending Parking Minimums
Parking minimums are local laws that require private businesses and residences to provide at least a certain number of off-street parking spaces. These requirements are one of the most significant factors shaping how our cities are built and laid out. At Strong Towns, we believe that every community with mandatory parking minimums on its books should seek to abolish them. These rules are not only unnecessary: they are destructive of our communities’ financial strength and resilience.
It's time to put an end to parking minimum laws and allow our cities to become productive places again.
What's wrong with parking minimums?
Strong Towns allow new businesses to flourish and treat their land as a valuable resource. Minimum parking requirements hinder the potential of Strong Towns by filling our cities with unproductive, empty parking spaces that don’t add value to our places. They push homes and businesses farther apart, impede the walkability of our neighborhoods, raise the cost of housing, and place an especially costly burden on small, local entrepreneurs.
In the absence of parking minimums, we’ll still have parking—but we’ll be free to decide how much it’s worth to us and weigh its value against the other things we could do with the same finite, precious land. We’ll no longer be forced to build more parking than we really need.
Join us each November for our annual #BlackFridayParking event, which takes a bold stand against parking minimums with an interactive, nationwide campaign.
Want to see an end to parking minimums across America? Join the movement that's working to accomplish that.
Learn More About the Problems with Parking Requirements
Progress on Parking Minimum Removals Across the Country
Click on the pins on our crowd-sourced map below read about what's going on in each city with regards to parking minimums. Has your town or city enacted meaningful parking reform? If so, you can put your city on the map using this form. [This map is a collaboration with our friends at the Parking Reform Network.]
Visit this page to add your town to the map.
More Stories About Parking
Resources to Help End Parking Minimums in Your Town
Here’s how to participate in this annual event!