> The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom to build housing without parking requirements does nothing to reduce the demand for autos.
Why would it? Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars. As long as people are required to own and drive cars not having enough available parking does nothing to help reduce the amount of cars being owned/driven. In fact, we know that it increase the number of cars on the road. That's how we end up with statistics like "30% of all traffic in urban areas come from people circling around looking for places to park".
You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not addressing the reasons people need cars, and only reducing the number of parking spots for the cars people already need.
Because it would both enable and incentivize development patterns where people need cars less.
> Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars.
Dense mixed-use development puts more of the places people need to go in places that don't require cars to get to them. (It also mass transit to other places more viable.)
Your focussed on alternatives ti cars to get to a fixed set of locations, but a big point of dense mixed-use development is to provide alternative locations.
> You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not addressing the reasons people need cars
The reason people need cars is that the places they need to be a far away because of development patterns; one of the key features of development patterns that causes this is...the space use created by parking requirements.
> Because it would both enable and incentivize development patterns where people need cars less.
As for enabling, nothing stops developers from doing that now. As for incentivizing them, if they can make more money not meeting most people's needs then that's what they'll do. This is also why so many cities have a huge amount of luxury housing available, but a massive lack of affordable housing. What makes developers the most money isn't always what's best for a city.
> Dense mixed-use development puts more of the places people need to go in places that don't require cars to get to them. (It also mass transit to other places more viable.) Your focused on alternatives ti cars to get to a fixed set of locations, but a big point of dense mixed-use development is to provide alternative locations.
I agree with this, but none of these cities are creating mixed-use development or building out their mass transit systems to link them. They're getting rid of parking spaces without any of those things in place.
> The reason people need cars is that the places they need to be a far away because of development patterns; one of the key features of development patterns that causes this is...the space use created by parking requirements.
A reason people need cars is because things are far away. Another reason is that there are no other means to get anywhere else. As long as those things are true, people still need cars. As long as people still need cars, they need places to put them.
The space use created by parking requirements would be a nice problem to solve, but it can't (and shouldn't) be addressed until the requirement of owning cars has been dealt with. When people no longer require cars, we can reduce the amount of space we've set aside for housing them.
> As for enabling, nothing stops developers from doing that now
Zoning regulations and parking requirements, which in many places exist for for both housing and commercial development, and vastly expabd the footprint of both, often do.
I'll concede that with the requirements in place developers have to provide the parking, and although that can mean a lot of things (from lots to underground/rooftop parking) it will increase costs.
Still, I think it's better to have those costs borne by developers and passed to property owners than have everyone else suffer the negative externalities caused by not having those necessary parking spaces available.
I think we'd agree that ideally, the parking spaces wouldn't be necessary because of good public transportation and city planning, and I think that once those things are in place those parking spaces could be reclaimed and repurposed, I just feel that for as long as the parking spots are needed it's better for the developer to provide for them in their plans.
Why would it? Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars. As long as people are required to own and drive cars not having enough available parking does nothing to help reduce the amount of cars being owned/driven. In fact, we know that it increase the number of cars on the road. That's how we end up with statistics like "30% of all traffic in urban areas come from people circling around looking for places to park".
You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not addressing the reasons people need cars, and only reducing the number of parking spots for the cars people already need.