Our road-tested messaging guide to gain more great neighborhoods and the homes we need, and to kick excess asphalt to the curb.
Parking policy shapes our lives. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Today's rules chronically overprescribe far more parking than people really need. Parking is systematically overbuilt - by law.
First, you'll begin to notice the vast stretches of empty pavement in your city or town, even in the busiest downtown areas. Wastelands of asphalt, right where something more useful or pleasant or needed could be: a tree, a garden, a preschool's play yard, apartments for people who work nearby. Once you're parking pilled, you'll see more and more places in your community where buildings are small islands in the middle of concrete seas, where pavement dominates the landscape, and where big box chain stores and highway-like "main drags" have eroded what used to be the particular local feel of a place. Mile after mile of characterless, cookie-cutter sprawl.
And what parking policy impacts you don't see, you 'experience.'
Parking rules play a sizable role in where people live, how much it costs, and how they get around. All that paved space is expensive. Building parking costs lots of money. The wasted space and added costs are passed on to renters and buyers. And when overbuilt parking simply won't fit on a lot or eats up too much of the project budget, housing simply doesn't get built, worsening the housing shortage. When there aren't enough homes, competition for what's available drives up home prices and rents. Same for small businesses and community services: mandates to overbuild parking can make or break a project, from a mom-and-pop cafe to a daycare.
But we don't have to do it this way! We can have nice things! We can have more homes in a housing shortage. We can have more daycares in a childcare shortage. We can have more trees and fewer heat islands. We can have inviting neighborhoods where homes and businesses are close by and it's pleasant and safe for everybody, from kids to seniors, to stroll with friends, walk the dog, or window shop.
Lifting the one-size-fits-all parking mandates ubiquitous in most city code books today can give businesses, homebuilders, and property owners the flexibility to have the parking they need without wasteful, costly overbuilding. It's a win-win-win - for people, places, and our pocketbooks - to right-size the amount of parking to the specific site, use, and location of new homes, renovated buildings, or new businesses.
Of course, these wins aren't always obvious. If you asked a random person on the street whether they'd like more or less parking, most would probably say more. North Americans default to a driver's perspective, not necessarily a pedestrian's or a parent's or a sidewalk cafe patron's. It's for good reason; we often have no other choice but to drive. We're locked in. But when you point out that cities demand more space for parking than the community needs and then tick through the ways that excess costs us all, it quickly looks like common sense for most people that we should use that space for things we want, not for more empty pavement. And it makes sense to most everyone that we should dial the amount of parking to what's right for the site.
So how do we move people from the driver's default to a broader view? One that comprises the costs of too much parking and the possibilities beyond it? How do we toggle from "where to park" to "how we live in this place"?
Alongside our partners, including Welcoming Neighbors Network and Parking Reform Network, Sightline Institute has undertaken public opinion polling and qualitative message testing both across the United States and within the Cascadia region, along with on-the-ground experimentation in a handful of local and state efforts, to compile messaging guidelines for lawmakers and advocates working to reform parking rules. Winning parking reform means winning so many other things too: more of the ho...

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