CityLab Daily: California’s New Parking Law Is a Win for Housing, Climate
Also today: Los Angeles’s plan to boost public transit ridership, and inside the world’s strictest Covid Zero city.
Los Angeles, home of ample parking.
Photo by Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2097 into law on Thursday, eliminating parking mandates for residential and commercial developments located within half a mile of major transit stops. This marks a major victory for housing and parking-reform advocates who say minimum parking requirements drive up housing costs, consume precious land and make neighborhoods less walkable.
It’s also a big win for climate, in part because it will boost public transit ridership, as Gernot Wagner and Matthew Lewis write in a new perspective for CityLab: “Parking mandates create powerful incentives for people to drive, even when other modes of transportation are convenient and available.”