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Update, July 21: Oregon’s Land Conservation and Development Commission unanimously approved these rules on a permanent basis. The first round of parking reforms, removing mandates near transit, for smaller homes, and for regulated-affordable homes, are set to take effect Jan. 1, 2023, in the state’s eight largest metro areas. Oregon’s statewide land use board declared its support Thursday for rules that, among other things, reduce or remove parking mandates in...

It’s not every day that elected leaders ask for less authority. But at a California Assembly committee hearing in April, two out of every three representatives for local governments testified in support of a new bill that would limit their zoning authority.  AB 2097, introduced by Assemblymember Laura Friedman, would prohibit cities from mandating off-street parking near high-quality transit, in an effort to increase housing production across the state. For decades,...

Update, July 21: Oregon’s Land Conservation and Development Commission unanimously approved these rules on a permanent basis. The first round of parking reforms, removing mandates near transit, for smaller homes, and for regulated-affordable homes, are set to take effect Jan. 1, 2023, in the state’s eight largest metro areas. About 100 years ago, governments started redesigning cities around cars. On Thursday, Oregon could approve a major step to prioritize space...

The conversation shared below was part of the YIMBYtown 2022 conference, cohosted by Sightline Institute and Portland: Neighbors Welcome.* It wouldn’t be YIMBYtown if we didn’t have at least one panel to talk about the high cost of free parking. The principles of Donald Shoup have never been more popular; advocates, elected officials, and policymakers are all looking at reform to car parking policies as an essential task to increase...

Housing reformers from all over the country are currently in Portland, Oregon, for YIMBYtown, a national conference about housing abundance and affordability. Last week I was lucky to catch up with one of the panelists, Leah Bojo. Bojo worked as the policy director for Chris Riley, a city councilor in Austin. In that time the Texas capital successfully removed parking minimums downtown and implemented Austin’s first parking benefits district: installing...

Fifty-five percent of Washington voters favor eliminating parking mandates within a half-mile of transit stops. That was one finding from a recent poll by Lake Research Partners measuring support for a larger package of reforms to open middle housing options for people across Washington. Though that bill (HB 1782) has since died, the polling results command optimism for future related efforts. Lake Research’s poll may be the first ever specifically...

In 2015, the city council of Fayetteville, Arkansas, adopted a radical but simple idea: do away with minimum parking mandates and let businesses decide for themselves how much parking they need. The average person walking down the main drag of Dickson Street might be surprised to learn that this growing city of 94,000 was perhaps the first city in the nation to eliminate commercial parking minimums citywide. Striking the section...

What if more of our collective brainpower—not just our governments, but the billions of tiny decisions that add up to our entire economy—were working to reduce our dependence on the automobile? How many good little ideas might we come up with? Here’s one: apartments that come with an all-you-can-ride transit pass included. It’s happening right now in Minneapolis, the Star-Tribune reported: Metro Transit plans to expand a pilot that provides all-you-can-ride passes to residents of apartments, condos...

Author’s note June 2022: This time last year, the Pacific Northwest was sweating through a historic “heat dome” climate event, which cost at least 96 lives in Oregon and strained state response systems. In some places, the predominance of parking lots raised temperatures even higher, intensifying health risks. Since then, Oregon has made some progress. In May 2022, its Land Conservation and Development Commission adopted temporary rules that would reduce...