Parking mandates

Requirements vary based on the type and usage of the building, with some typically being one parking spot per: apartment; 300 square feet of retail or commercial space; 100 square feet of restaurant dining area; two hospital beds; or five seats in a church's pews.

[4] Thus different land uses, whether they be commercial, residential or industrial, have different requirements to meet when deriving the number of parking spots needed.

Donald Shoup, a UCLA urban planning professor who pioneered the field of parking research, has called parking minimums a "pseudoscience",[8] as the ITE's calculations are typically based on minimal data and approximations that cannot be widely applied to other businesses, even of the same type.

[12][13] The average number of parking spots per new residential unit increased from 0.8 in 1950 to a peak of 1.7 in 1998, and has since declined to 1.1 by 2022.

[5] The average number of parking spots per 1,000 square ft. of new office buildings shows a similar change, from 1.25 in 1950 to 3.75 in 1999 to 2.25 in 2022.

[5] Parking minimums fail to accomplish their primary stated purpose, which is to eliminate curb congestion.

[14] In 2023 in Charlotte, North Carolina, a developer was allowed to build a 104 unit apartment complex without any on-site parking.

[5] In Aurora, CO, the city requires a 405 unit apartment complex to have 485 parking spaces, (95 more than the developer predicts the residents will need), thereby increasing the average monthly rent by $100.

[14] Recently parking minimums have become a focus for climate change and affordable housing activists, as it has become apparent that a high proportion of urban land use is allocated for cars as a result of these policies.

[16] On July 21, 2022, Oregon's Land Conservation and Development Commission, a board of the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, passed a set of rules prohibiting Oregon's eight largest metropolitan areas (spanning 48 cities and 5 counties, accounting for two-thirds of the state’s population) from mandating parking minimums within a half-mile of frequent transit, for homes of 750 square feet or less, or for homes meeting affordability targets.

[17] In September 2022, the U.S. state of California passed AB 2097, which includes a ban on parking minimums for buildings within 1⁄2 mile (0.80 km) of public transit.

[18] In 2024, Colorado passed a bill, HB-1304, which eliminates and prohibits parking mandates for most multifamily residential properties within a metropolitan planning organization within a quarter mile of a transit stop or station after June 30, 2025, with an exception for multifamily properties of more than 20 units.

[19][20][21] Since 2015, over 35 major cities in the US have eliminated parking minimums, including Anchorage, Austin, Berkeley, Buffalo, Fayetteville, Hartford, Lexington, Minneapolis, Nashville, Raleigh, Richmond, San Jose, Seattle, and Spokane among others.