Seattle Has No Plans to Ditch Parking Requirements

Seattle intends to maintain minimum parking requirements in much of the city, even as it has reduced other restrictions on new housing construction, reports Ryan Packer in The Urbanist.

“The fact that the City of Seattle intends to keep parking mandates that could impede housing growth was a footnote as the City released new zoning maps last month, as part of the latest update to Bruce Harrell’s One Seattle Comprehensive Plan.” Yet the city has led the way on parking reform in the past, eliminating parking mandates near transit in 2012.

The updated rules would lower requirements to one stall per every two housing units. “This would apply to the city’s new middle housing regulations, which are set to allow four to six units on all lots across the city, but also to the 30 new “neighborhood centers” proposed, which include places like Tangletown, North Magnolia, and central Beacon Hill, where more units would be allowed.”

According to Matt Hutchins, founding principal at CAST Architecture, “The difference between having zero parking spaces and having one parking space might be that there’s 1,000 square feet of extra paved area.” Hutchins told The Urbanist, “It has an outsized effect. And many, many places have demonstrated that that [sic] not requiring parking doesn’t mean that developers won’t provide it when they can or want to.”