What does it take to make the bold step toward ending parking minimums in an entire city?
Hartford, Connecticut made history in 2017 by becoming the first city to remove minimum parking requirements citywide.
Rachel Quednau revisits the history making act with a few questions: "We wish this was the standard everywhere, but it’s not, so Hartford’s is a radical act. What created the circumstances that allowed this change to be implemented? What softened the ground for change that, in so many municipalities, seems a long ways away?"
Quednau finds three key factors involved with Hartford's decision to remove parking minimums. The article goes into more detail for each of these three points:
- The city is already easily accessible without a car.
- The removal of parking minimums happened in tandem with a broader city-wide movement toward people-centered places.
- The elimination of parking minimums happened incrementally over time.
As Quednau suggests to conclude the article, many U.S. cities have some or all of these ingredients already in place, so it could be that more cities begin to follow Hartford's example.
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