Strong Towns: For Better Cities, End Parking Subsidies

On the Strong Towns podcast, John Pattison outlines the organization’s position that parking mandates and subsidies “are probably hobbling your city’s strength and resilience right now.” The 2022 Strong Towns strategic plan includes a priority campaign to end parking mandates and subsidies as one way to make land use more productive and make cities more livable and affordable.

According to Strong Towns, parking mandates raise the cost of construction, increase the need for public investment in infrastructure, and come with opportunity costs like the loss of valuable real estate to parking. “Maybe that’s what’s most insidious about parking mandates: they take away the flexibility and agency that homeowners, developers, business owners, and residents deserve.”

Parking mandates and subsidies are so universally bad that getting rid of them is one of the few one-size-fits-all-communities recommendations we make at Strong Towns.

“This one, reasonable change to our approach will unlock opportunities for more housing, more businesses, more outdoor seating, more parks and other public spaces, better public transportation systems, more pleasant places to walk and bike, and stronger and more financially resilient cities.”