Smart Growth Parking Best Practices

The Maryland Governor's Office of Smart Growth has published Driving Urban Environments: Smart Growth Parking Best Practices.Recognizing the importance of parking in development, this report looks for new ways to manage parking supply and demand, to design parking facilities, and to provide financing, offering more, not fewer, options to communities, households and developers. These creative approaches are intended to promote better project design, reduce construction and operational costs, and add value to development projects.The main sections of this study specifically address these three areas—parking management, parking design,and parking financing. The first section identifies parking management strategies that control the supplyand demand for parking. The following section proposes innovative design strategies that reduce theaesthetic and environmental impacts of parking facilities, including on-street parking, surface parking lots,and parking structures. The final section outlines various financing mechanisms and incentives for theconstruction of both public and private parking structures.[Editor's note: The link below is to a 500KB PDF document.]