Virginia Postrel, Columnist

Would You Trade a Parking Spot for an Extra Bedroom?

A bill in the California Legislature would allow developers more freedom to decide what works best for a given project.

August 9, 2021 at 1:00 PM UTC

Virginia Postrel is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and author, most recently, of “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.”

The California desert.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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A bill wending its way through the California Legislature could suddenly make a lot more new housing economically feasible.

Known as AB 1401, the legislation would abolish local parking requirements for new residential and commercial developments near bus or train stops. It applies to counties with more than 600,000 residents and cities with more than 75,000 people.2