05-14-2016, 11:14 AM
(05-14-2016, 11:04 AM)MidTowner Wrote: Developers won't suddenly opt to build zero parking spaces if it means they can't sell their units. They will instead offer the parking spaces their customers actually demand and are willing to pay for.
Exactly. In most areas, we assume that business owners know how to operate their businesses. But suddenly, when it comes to figuring out how much parking to build, they are little babies who need to be told when to wipe their noses.
Imagine if we required that every grocery store bake a certain number of loaves of bread every day per square foot of store. Imagine further if we set that number so high that they couldn’t give away all the loaves for free.
That’s what we’re doing right now for parking. For some reason, I doubt I could find anybody who wouldn’t find the Loaf Rule to be absurd, but parking minima are still in existence.
I think a clue may be found, however, even in the proposals for change: in many cases, we see proposals to replace minima with maxima. So in other words, the idea of just not having a rule doesn’t even occur. This suggests the real problem is an authoritarian strain in the planning profession and more widely in people interested in municipal governance. I’m not one of those people who thinks that almost all regulation is bad, but the arguments those people make are valid in many cases and need to be considered carefully in each case where regulation is proposed to be created or continued.