Cities Can't Be About Moving Cars
(Source: Pexels.)
I wrote an article on parking reform that appeared in the Minnesota-based publication Alpha News. The mission of Alpha News is to report “stories that go untold by our state’s mainstream media.” In a partisan media environment, I think it’s safe to say that the publication tends to be sympathetic to the state’s Republicans and hostile to the Minnesota Democratic Farm Labor (DFL) party.
I’m rather bored by that entire media dichotomy, especially when it substitutes for a thoughtful pursuit of ideas. There are good reasons for all Minnesotans, and all Americans, for that matter, to find value in the Strong Towns approach, regardless of how they identify politically. In fact, I wrote the article for Alpha News because they had reported on the parking reform issue at the Minnesota state legislature. This is a conversation we should all be having.
My thinking on parking reform should be affirming to a reader of Alpha News. Central planners, lacking humility and perspective, created an overly simplistic set of zoning regulations and imposed them on cities. These included regulations on parking, some of the most inflexible, yet baseless, rules in the package.
These regulations have, among other things, resulted in a development pattern that costs more to service and maintain than it generates in local wealth and tax capacity. The results are higher taxes, more debt, reduced services, and local governments that are fundamentally insolvent. We need local governments to be smart and thoughtful servants of the people in their community, but insolvent governments tend to do dumb and desperate things. They tend to develop a rivalrous, predatory mindset with the populations they serve.
In addition, parking regulations hurt small businesses while strengthening the position of corporations and franchises. They limit the options of families, force burdens on churches, schools, and other civic institutions, and impair property rights without a justifiable nexus. They are universally a net negative, yet local governments cling to them, largely for the arbitrary empowerment parking regulations provide.
There were a number of reactionary comments to both Alpha News articles with a lot of apparently Republican-leaning commenters expressing affinity for government parking mandates (while also, ironically, decrying socialists and central planners). One comment, in particular, has lived rent free in my brain for a couple of days now:
So I think this [eliminating parking mandates] is not being pushed as a "freedom from regs" item as much as a sly way to make use of autos in urban areas harder and harder. This is the 15-minute city idea disguised as something else.
I’ve thought about this comment a ton. It gets at something important, and it’s not wrong, but it is correct based on a narrow—maybe even sly—understanding of reality. Let me unpack that.
I live in the city of Brainerd. I don’t live on the outskirts of town or in a neighboring jurisdiction; I live right in the core of the city. Now, it’s a small town and so “urban” here is different then, say, the core of Minneapolis, but I still live on a gridded street a few blocks from the downtown in a historic house built over a century ago.
I own three cars. Collectively, we don’t put a lot of miles on them—I walk to work every day, my wife works mostly from home, and the kids go to school eight blocks away—but I travel for work and need a car to get to the airport, my wife is a reporter and randomly needs a vehicle on short notice, and my kids are teenagers with all the teenage commitments. So, I own three cars.
As a city-dweller, there are some truths about automobile use here that may not be apparent to someone who doesn’t live in a city. First, and most importantly, I have a lot of options for how I get around. I can drive, but I don’t have to. I can walk if I want. I can bike. Often, it is more convenient to walk than drive, quicker to bike than drive, and more pleasant to just be out of my car. Sometimes it is more convenient to drive and I sometimes do. Having options is nice.
A second truth is that my options increase the more parking spaces are eliminated and replaced with something else. Fill that parking lot in the downtown with a new restaurant and I’ve got another place to go. Take out some parking spots and expand seating and now that restaurant can serve more people, maybe expand their offerings, maybe be open more evenings. That’s all good. Add more homes to my neighborhood and there are more patrons for all this new stuff, all within easy walking distance, none of them requiring a parking spot.
Now, maybe my parents are visiting and I want to drive because my dad doesn’t walk well. In order for me to do that, there needs to be parking. The city shouldn’t be giving away those remaining spots for free—if they give them away, they all fill up, generally with people not even patronizing downtown businesses. The taxpayers of my city paid for these stalls and there should be a charge to use them, something high enough to recover our investment and to make sure that there’s always one or two empty spots when I choose to drive instead of walk.
Of course, I could always drop my family off, park a couple blocks away, and walk over. I’d probably do that because, if it’s not clear enough already, I’m a pretty frugal person. I walk more than I drive for a lot of reasons, but the primary one is that I’m cheap.
A third truth is that driving in my city is way nicer than driving in the neighboring suburb. Sure, I never go over 30 miles per hour, but I can get everywhere really quickly. It’s not about speed; it’s about travel time. With gridded streets I’ve got lots of options for how to get somewhere.
When I’m forced to drive out to the edge of town, I’m continually frustrated by the way the roads have been engineered to maximize speed at the expense of my time. High speeds mean lots of traffic signals with long intervals. If I hit them green, great, but I seemingly never hit them green and so I spend lots of time going nowhere. Every car is channeled to the same places, so I’m always driving in congestion, even in off-peak times. And every destination is separated, so I can see where I want to go but it’s a five-minute circuitous trip to get there. The system treats me like an idiot and I find the entire experience demeaning and frustrating.
And this brings me to the fourth and final truth I plan to share: about the only place that isn’t quick and convenient to drive in my city is when I am forced to cross the highway that runs through the middle of it. That is where all the suburban dumb creeps in, from traffic signals that waste my time to being forced to drive six blocks out of my way to travel one block.
That highway is there not because of me. It is there to accommodate people who live outside of the city. For some reason (and I don’t understand this) there is a commonly held belief that the lives of people living in cities is somehow dependent on people who live outside of cities. For urban spaces to be successful, people who prefer to live in suburban areas need to be able to drive quickly through our neighborhoods and then conveniently park within feet of whatever destination they choose.
My life would be way better if that highway went away. If we turned it back into the grid, made it function like nearly all our other streets, I’d have even more options. Way more options along with a much higher quality of life.
Not only that, my city would be far more prosperous. Replace those parking lots with other things and the tax base goes up substantially. Reduce the amount of pavement and drainage we are providing and our costs go down substantially. Give me more options and my property value goes up. Get rid of that highway and I’d have lower taxes, better services, along with more family wealth. Why would I not want this?
So, let’s go back to the comment. Eliminating parking mandates, in the view of this commenter, is “a sly way to make use of autos in urban areas harder and harder.”
Excuse me, harder and harder for whom?
Not for me! It will make operating an automobile here way easier. Remember, I’m not anti-car. I own three of them. I value having the option to drive when I need or want to. Getting rid of the highway, reducing the amount of parking we have in this city while charging a fair amount for what is left, these steps would make it easier—not harder—for me to drive within my urban area whenever I choose to. Way, way, way easier!
I said the commenter wasn’t wrong from a narrow perspective, so what is that perspective? For whom does eliminating parking mandates potentially make it harder and harder to use an auto in an urban area? That is simple: commuters and others who live outside the city that want to be able to, at will, drive at high speeds into the core of an urban area and conveniently park for free.
If the highway through my city were turned back into a local street, it would make my life a lot better. During peak commuting times, traffic would back up on the outskirts of town (there would be congestion to enter the city) but once inside, it would flow fairly well. In fact, for everyone who lived in the city, travel times would go down for most trips.
The real question is: why does my city do this? Why do we devalue our tax base to accommodate a highway through the middle of it? Why do we subsidize, with our money and our time, the preference of some to live outside the city and commute in? Why is their ease and comfort a priority I am being taxed for?
The cultural legacy of the Suburban Experiment is a mindset that cities, in order to thrive, need the suburbs. They need suburban workers. They need suburban shoppers. They need commuters and traffic and all that comes with it. This was never true, a fact that becomes more and more obvious to more and more people with each passing day.
Charles Marohn—known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues—is the founder and president of Strong Towns. He is a land use planner and civil engineer with decades of experience. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning, both from the University of Minnesota.
Marohn is the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley, 2019) and Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town (Wiley 2021). He hosts the Strong Towns Podcast and is a primary writer for Strong Towns’ web content. He has presented Strong Towns concepts in hundreds of cities and towns across North America.