Research

Last year, we reported on the accelerating pace of state-level housing supply reform, with major victories in four states and laws being enacted across the country. This year, state legislatures kept up the pace, with 263 individual bills under consideration that would contribute to easing the regulatory burdens on homebuilding, touching on areas from accessory dwelling unit (ADU) permitting to building code reforms. With most state legislatures having adjourned for the year, we can take stock of this year’s successes and failures:

A growing consensus argues that minimum parking requirements (MPRs) make housing more expensive. This paper examines two claims from this discussion: (1) that MPRs discourage the construction of small units; (2) that the costs of building required parking are "passed on" to buyers and renters in the form of higher prices and rents. However, the mechanisms behind these two effects have never been made explicit in the literature. This paper proposes, for each claim, a plausible mechanism relying on the specific choices of housing suppliers and consumers. We propose that MPRs discourage small units because they eliminate the most profitable floorspace/parking bundle to supply to relatively lower-income households. We propose that parking costs may be passed on by reducing the supply of housing on offer at a given price.

Current European parking policies do not seem to steer towards a future where urban transport meets the climate goals. Prominent in current housing an…

Where curb parking is overcrowded, drivers who are searching for a rare open curb space congest traffic, pollute the air, and produce carbon dioxide. To avoid these problems, some cities have established Parking Benefit Districts that charge market prices for curb parking and spend the revenue to pay for public services on the metered blocks. A case study of Manhattan’s Upper West Side found that charging market prices for the currently unmetered curb spaces would eliminate 22 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per block per year and yield at least $1,025 per household per year to improve public services.

Cars are, and will for the foreseeable future continue to be, an incredibly important component of our society. In new research Guang Tian looks at the models used by transport planners to determin…

The paper is based on research conducted with support from the German Academic Exchange (DAAD) Research Stays for Academics funding.While German citie…

We estimate the off-street parking supply of the seven most economically productive cities in Santa Clara County, California, better known as Silicon Valley. Using assessor data, municipal zoning data, and visual inspection of aerial imagery, we estimate that about 13 percent of the land area in these cities is devoted to parking, and that more than half of the average commercial parcel is parking space. This latter fact suggests that minimum parking requirements, if binding, depress Silicon Valley’s commercial and industrial densities, and thus its economic output. In an exploratory empiri...

(2021). How interventions in master plans affect public transport competitiveness versus cars: a case study of two small and two medium-sized city regions. Urban, Planning and Transport Research. Ahead of Print.

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Researchers used Seattle as a case study to find the association between TNC trips and on-street parking occupancy. They found that up to a certain point, more Uber trips meant more parking occupancy. But model predictions show that once TNC trips reach about three times what they were in 2016, parking revenues will likely decline. The final report offers policy options to help cities plan accordingly.

To alleviate many parking-related externalities, several rapidly growing cities globally are optimizing parking through “smart-parking” programs, invo…

Improving the way developers and planners assess parking demand.

Residents are often offered on-street parking at a fraction of the market price which may cause excess car ownership. However, residential parking cos…

If you think traffic in city centers is bad now, just wait until self-driving cars emerge on the scene, cruising around to avoid paying hefty downtown parking fees.

(2019). Is there such a thing as a ‘fair’ distribution of road space?. Journal of Urban Design. Ahead of Print.

Suburbanization and auto dependency have major problems. An alternative, the walkable neighborhood system, is one of a number of ideas designed to inc…

Investigating emerging transportation services is critical to forecasting mode choice and providing appropriate infrastructure. One such infrastructure is parking, as parking demand may shift with the availability of ride-hailing services. This study uses ethnographic methods—complemented with passenger surveys collected when driving for Uber and Lyft in the Denver, Colorado, region—to gather quantitative and qualitative data on ride-hailing and analyze the impacts of ride-hailing on parking, including changes in parking demand and parking as a reason to deter driving. The study also examin...