Parking requirements dictate much of what gets built and what doesn’t in this city. Residential, commercial, it doesn’t matter. City code dictates the amount of parking you need or don’t need in order for you to put up that fourplex or open that restaurant. City code hasn’t exactly warmed to the idea of urban neighborhoods as well as it should have: every 100 square feet of a restaurant requires a parking space, just as every single hotel room does.
Going back to his days on Dallas City Plan Commission, North Oak Cliff Councilman Chad West has been a proponent to rethinking the code to better reflect the conditions in the neighborhoods that make Dallas the city that it is.
And because you have absolutely nowhere to go other than your allotted walks, you’ll be able to tune into this stream with West and a few others that talk about this very topic. The Coalition for a New Dallas, the super PAC that D founder Wick Allison started (and is independent of operations at D, mind you), is sponsoring a Zoom stream with West, Travis Liska of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, and Mintwood Real Estate’s Katy Slade. It happens Monday, April 27, at 5:30 p.m. It’s not like you have anything else to do.
When we come out of this pandemic, we’ll be coming to a city that will be greatly changed. Before the pandemic, the requirements were already making some projects pencil out and others not. The digital symposium promises to discuss “innovative parking proposals” that could change how our city does business.
When we can all return to our lives, it’ll be particularly important for the city to establish smart policies that encourage sustainable growth. And that, in many ways, starts with parking.
“Many cities in DFW, including Dallas, have antiquated parking codes that have not been updated in decades to reflect changes in how people move around,” West said. “The codes often stand in the way of thoughtful, neighborhood-centric growth. It’s time for us to change that.”
