Cities Switch From Requiring Too Many Parking Spaces To Banning Too Many Parking Spaces

This past week, Nashville's Metro Council approved a new ordinance that eliminates minimum parking requirements in the city's "urban zoning overlay" district. From now on, developers in those urban zones won't have to build parking spaces no one wants.

That doesn't mean Nashville builders are free to decide how much parking to construct, however. The city's got rid of parking minimums for some downtown areas while also Technically legal commercial uses are often rendered practically infeasible by minimum parking requirements.

But imposing parking maximums comes with its own costs.

At best, they'll force developers to make some special showing to city officials that their buildings will require more spaces than what the parking maximum allows in order to obtain a variance. The costs and delays of that process will be paid by consumers too.

Worse still, parking maximums could prevent builders from adding parking spaces they think are necessary.

The problem with parking minimums isn't per se that they made buildings more expensive; it's that they added expenses people don't think are worth paying.

If people are willing to pay for additional parking spaces but are prevented from having them, that will reduce the utility of a new development. Residents of a new apartment might have to compete for too few parking spaces. Business owners could lose customers for lack of available parking.

Multiply those results across a whole city, and overall economic efficiency suffers.

By imposing parking maximums, cities also make the case against parking minimums weaker.

The most compelling argument for ditching those policies is that you don't need the government micromanaging the number of parking spaces buildings need. You know it's a compelling argument because even policy makers who are continuing to micromanage parking spaces keep making it.

Eliminating parking minimums "doesn't mean that they can't build parking, that just means that these developments will not be overparked," Nashville Metro Councilmember Angie Henderson apartments that would have been illegal or infeasible under the old rules.

The lesson is that developers can figure out for themselves how many parking spaces the ultimate users of their buildings will actually want. But too many cities are trying to find new ways to control developers' parking decisions.