Cities Release The Handbrake On Parking Mandates To Accelerate Housing Growth A nationwide housing and affordability crisis is as good a time as any to rethink well-settled ordinances, and cities across the country are looking into some of their most firmly entrenched policies: the American tradition of parking spots included with housing. Advocates say elimination and reduction of minimum parking requirements remove a potential hurdle to building housing, at least in transit-rich areas. Those advocates have notched a string of recent wins. Since October, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Culver City, California; Lexington, Kentucky; and Anchorage, Alaska, have been just some of the cities to eliminate parking minimums. They join Minneapolis, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, which eliminated minimums years ago and offer a glimpse into how the parking change can affect housing development. But there are decades of policies mandating the ratio of parking spaces per newly developed housing unit still to be addressed in much of the U.S., and many residents have deeply ingrained expectations for off-street parking. 
“We've been doing the same type of auto-centric policy for the last 70 to 80 years,” Urban Land Institute Senior Director Paul Angelone told Bisnow. “Following World War II, the way that we've done a lot of our urban development patterns, we've been doing since…  Read the full story here. | 
