Parking Mandates Are Bad Policy

The press conference announcing a bill that would end parking mandates across Minnesota.

The Minnesota Legislature will soon be debating the merits of a statewide parking reform bill. I was there at the press conference announcing the legislation. Strong Towns has never endorsed a piece of legislation before, but the decision to stand by this one was easy. The bill does one thing and one thing only: it prohibits local governments from mandating private property owners build public parking.

Before I even left the capitol to head home, the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities (CGMC) issued a press release opposing the bill. I’m very familiar with CGMC and their long history of opposing good policy, seemingly because it rallies the troops. I’m not a political insider, but my sense of CGMC is that they bark loud because they don’t have a lot of credibility or influence. Their support for government parking mandates is not likely to improve that standing in the long term.

The League of Minnesota Cities, however, has significant credibility and influence. That made their response a bit more notable. Unlike CGMC, they didn’t defend a local government’s power to require families and businesses to supply free public parking (it’s not really defensible). Instead, the League’s messaging tried to identify an even worse villain to hide behind: developers.

The president of the League of Minnesota Cities, Jenny Max, wrote an article on the issue for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It pursued the same line of attack, portraying developers as the enemy of the public good. The opinion piece mentions “developers” four times in four short paragraphs, ending with a call to not “mandate away local authority and hand it to private developers.” Consider it a NIMBY call to action.

I’m not sure it will work this time. Parking mandates are simply bad policy. No government official or committee knows how much parking is needed for any given home or business. The tables of standards cities use are mostly copied from other cities. Those cities copied them from others. The source code for the decades of copying are discredited studies prepared in the 1950s and 1960s of mostly first-ring suburbs in California.

I called these standards “pseudo-science” during the press conference. They are the very definition of arbitrary, the numbers pulled out of thin air and then selectively enforced against families and small businesses by cities across Minnesota. Most administrators, planners, engineers, and other technical professionals working at city hall know this is a bad approach. Most local elected officials know it, as well.

These mandates persist not because they are needed but because they give local governments power. Arbitrary and excessive parking mandates make the permitting process complex and opaque. Local governments leverage parking mandates to force delays and gain other concessions during permitting. The rarely spoken truth is that parking mandates are not really about parking.

The League’s Jenny Max is the city administrator in Nisswa, Minnesota, the next city north of my hometown of Brainerd. Nisswa has removed nearly all of their minimum parking mandates, largely at the behest of one of the area’s preeminent developers. This was a good move, but it took an uncommon amount of leadership, patience, and alignment of interests.

Most local governments struggle to remove their parking mandates. This is especially true in Greater Minnesota where the political price paid by local leaders just isn’t worth the effort. I’ve been involved in many of these discussions, most recently in my hometown of Brainerd. In these settings, one or two people showing up in opposition generates headlines and backlash. Few local leaders want to use their clout on zoning code amendments.

Yet, government parking mandates are really harmful, especially in small towns and rural areas. Big box stores and corporate franchises are often happy to meet these mandates, or they’ll bring in attorneys to negotiate them down, but small businesses struggle with the cost burden. Churches, schools, and other civic buildings frequently have to reduce their plans to meet arbitrary parking requirements. Needed housing is not being built because parking rules make it infeasible.

The parking reform bill Strong Towns has endorsed is necessary to get Minnesota cities unstuck. This is not the state coming in and telling local leaders what to do; that is how Minnesota got parking mandates, to begin with. No, this is the legislature helping local government leaders do what mayors, city council members, and city staffs all over Minnesota know needs to happen.

If the League of Minnesota Cities talks to all of their members on this issue, they’ll discover broad support for the idea of ending parking mandates. Let’s step back from the adversarial rhetoric and make a good policy change for Minnesota’s cities.

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Charles Marohn
Charles Marohn

Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.

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