The city council in Austin, Texas recently proposed something that could seem like political Kryptonite: getting rid of parking minimums.
Those are the rules that dictate how much off-street parking developers must provide — as in, a certain number of spaces for every apartment and business.
Around the country, cities are throwing out their own parking requirements – hoping to end up with less parking, more affordable housing, better transit, and walkable neighborhoods.
Given that parking minimums (and cars in general) are a very recent development in the context of all urban history and that, last I checked, we did, in fact, have cities before the 1940s, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that this isn’t a recipe for some new corporate hellscape.
Funnily enough, parking minimums were only developed in the first place so that businesses could attract wealthy white suburbanites as they fled cities, so if you really want a social justice framing, this is essentially undoing one of the core relics of white flight.
No, parking minimums were created because people were just parking their shit wherever the fuck they wanted, to the point that streets became unusable.