IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/houspd/v21y2011i1p45-68.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Minimum parking requirements and housing affordability in New York City

Author

Listed:
  • Simon McDonnell
  • Josiah Madar
  • Vicki Been

Abstract

Many cities throughout the United States require developers of new residential construction to provide a minimum number of accompanying off-street parking spaces. However, critics argue that these requirements increase housing costs by bundling an oversupply of parking with new housing and by reducing the number of units developers could otherwise fit on a given lot. Furthermore, the requirements reduce the subsequent direct costs of car ownership by forcing up-front, or subsidizing, consumption of parking spaces, which leads to increases in auto-use and its related externalities. Such critics advocate eliminating or at least reducing the requirements to be more responsive to locational context, particularly proximity to transit. In this article, we explore the theoretical objections to minimum parking requirements and the limited empirical literature. We then use lot-level data and GIS to analyze parking requirements in New York City to determine to what extent they are already effectively sensitive to transit proximity. Finally, we examine developer response to parking requirements by comparing the number of spaces that are actually built to the number required by applicable zoning law. Our results indicate that the per-unit parking requirement in New York is, on average, lower in areas near rail transit stations, but the required number of spaces per square foot of lot area is higher, on average, in transit accessible areas. We also find that by and large, developers tend to build only the bare minimum of parking required by zoning, suggesting that the minimum parking requirements are binding for developers, as argued by critics, and that developers do not simply build parking out of perceived marked need. Our results raise the possibility that even in cities with complex and tailored parking requirements, there is room to tie the requirements more closely to contextual factors. Further, such changes are likely to result in fewer parking spaces from residential developers.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon McDonnell & Josiah Madar & Vicki Been, 2011. "Minimum parking requirements and housing affordability in New York City," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 45-68, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:houspd:v:21:y:2011:i:1:p:45-68
    DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2011.534386
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10511482.2011.534386
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10511482.2011.534386?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:ucp:bkecon:9781884829987 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thumm, Alex Jürgen & Perl, Anthony, 2020. "Puzzling over parking: Assessing the transitional parking requirement in Vancouver, British Columbia," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 85-101.
    2. Clifford Winston, 2013. "On the Performance of the U.S. Transportation System: Caution Ahead," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 773-824, September.
    3. Wang, Rui & Yuan, Quan, 2013. "Parking practices and policies under rapid motorization: The case of China," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 109-116.
    4. Guo, Zhan & McDonnell, Simon, 2013. "Curb parking pricing for local residents: An exploration in New York City based on willingness to pay," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 186-198.
    5. Furth, Salim & Gray, Nolan, 2019. "Do Minimum-Lot-Size Regulations Limit Housing Supply in Texas?," Annals of Computational Economics, George Mason University, Mercatus Center, May.
    6. Guo, Zhan, 2013. "Does residential parking supply affect household car ownership? The case of New York City," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 18-28.
    7. Taylor, Dr Elizabeth, 2021. "Free parking for free people: German road laws and rights as constraints on local car parking management," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 23-33.
    8. Li, Fei & Guo, Zhan, 2014. "Do parking standards matter? Evaluating the London parking reform with a matched-pair approach," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 352-365.
    9. Wang, James J. & Liu, Qian, 2014. "Understanding the parking supply mechanism in China: a case study of Shenzhen," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 77-88.
    10. Constantine E. Kontokosta, 2016. "The Quantified Community and Neighborhood Labs: A Framework for Computational Urban Science and Civic Technology Innovation," Journal of Urban Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(4), pages 67-84, October.
    11. Zhan Guo & Shuai Ren, 2013. "From Minimum to Maximum: Impact of the London Parking Reform on Residential Parking Supply from 2004 to 2010?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(6), pages 1183-1200, May.
    12. Ou, Shiqi & Lin, Zhenhong & He, Xin & Przesmitzki, Steven, 2018. "Estimation of vehicle home parking availability in China and quantification of its potential impacts on plug-in electric vehicle ownership cost," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 107-117.
    13. Guo, Zhan, 2013. "Home parking convenience, household car usage, and implications to residential parking policies," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 97-106.
    14. Taylor, Elizabeth Jean, 2020. "Parking policy: The politics and uneven use of residential parking space in Melbourne," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    15. Gabbe, C.J. & Pierce, Gregory & Clowers, Gordon, 2020. "Parking policy: The effects of residential minimum parking requirements in Seattle," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    16. Xiang Tang & Jianxiao Ma & Peng He & Chubo Xu, 2022. "Parking Allocation Index Analysis of Office Building Based on the TOD Measurement Method," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-14, February.
    17. Qian Liu & Mingjian Zhu & Zuopeng Xiao, 2019. "Workplace Parking Provision and Built Environments: Improving Context-Specific Parking Standards Towards Sustainable Transport," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-23, February.
    18. Andersson, Matts & Mandell, Svante & Thörn, Helena Braun & Gomér, Ylva, 2016. "The effect of minimum parking requirements on the housing stock," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 206-215.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:houspd:v:21:y:2011:i:1:p:45-68. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RHPD20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.