If you want a deep deep dive into how parking has shaped our cities - I would recommend reading about the “high cost of free parking” and “parking minimums”.
Right but the cities are already there. We don't have the luxury of redefining the American lifestyle and dependence on cars with a single unit of new housing. There's no benefit for the developer - leaving out parking (aside from the mandate to include it) makes the property less desirable.
The fact that mandates and minimums exist suggests that this is not the case; if parking paid for itself, no mandates would be necessary and developers would already be incentivized to build it by the market. In jurisdictions that have relaxed parking requirements, however, developers generally build less parking after the rules change (and sometimes as little as none). This shouldn't be too surprising: in cities with decent transit, at least some residents don't drive and so don't need the parking, so a market exists for housing without it, and parking is expensive to build, especially if it's underground, which is typical for multifamily residential construction in dense urban areas. Underground parking in the US typically costs ~$50k per space to build.
grumple|4 years ago
apendleton|4 years ago