New York's Search for the Right Number of Parking Spaces

Parking maximums are a relative rarity in cities. Most municipalities have parking minimums, which require developers to include a certain amount of off-street parking per unit. Parking maximums do quite the opposite, effectively discouraging people from owning cars. In Portland, for instance, maximums vary based on a development's distance to transit; the closer you get to a bus or rail stop, the fewer parking spaces you're allowed to build.

Recently the planning department of New York City announced it was revising its parking regulations in Manhattan. Parking in New York has been limited in the core since 1982, when the city imposed caps on the number of parking spots created by residential developers. Those rules [PDF] permitted developers to create spots for only 20 percent of new residential units below 60th Street, and for only 35 percent in buildings up to 110th Street on the west and 96th Street on the east, with a total ceiling of 200 spaces per building.