Loyal opponent MSetty made some points about parking in comments to last week’s post about subsidies to the automobile. As MSetty indicated, it has become an article of faith among planning advocates that parking is a huge subsidy to auto drivers, particularly because most city zoning codes impose minimum parking requirements on all development.
UCLA economist and planning Professor Donald Shoup is behind many of these claims. Shoup makes a cogent argument against minimum parking requirements, saying that “when considered an impact fee, minimum parking requirements can increase development costs by more than 10 times the impact fee for all other public purposes combined.”
