Tom Vanderbilt over at Slate has a great piece on the stupidity of city parking codes, which I highly recommend to Dallas, Plano, and any other city trying to revitalize its downtowns. In Dallas, a city code written in the 1950’s continues to hamper development, encourage sprawl, and keep downtown Dallas blacktopped with ugly parking lots. My last artillery attack on the city’s restrictive and absurdist parking codes was in 2005. I quote myself:
For some reason, decades ago, somebody got it into his head that it was the city’s responsibility to make sure every Tom, Dick, and Harry had a place to park. To make sure there was enough parking, ordinances were enacted that required anybody who did anything to provide off-street parking. The requirements were written with a precision that would make a Soviet planner quiver with delight.
Do you want to build an office building? You must provide one off-street parking space for every 333 square feet. Do you run a catering service? You must have one off-street parking space for every 200 square feet. You’re a lithographer? You need one space for every 300 square feet. You have a call to build a church? You need “one space for each four fixed seats in the sanctuary.”
Vandervilt quotes a Purdue University study found 85,000 unused parking spaces in one county they studied. The antiquated city code is why you see empty spaces where you don’t want to go and no spaces where you do want to go. Why not turn the matter over to the private sector? If a business doesn’t have enough parking, it goes out of business. If it has too much parking, it has wasted precious capital. Why is the city bureaucracy allocating private dollars?
