Livable Places vs. Parking Spaces
30 parking spaces for every citizen. Houston's Planning Director explains why that’s not helpful.
By Margaret Wallace Brown, AICP, CNU-A
Houston, Texas - In 2023, Houston, Texas celebrated its 187th birthday. Perhaps because it was founded by two real estate speculators from New York, Houston has always guided development by carrots, instead of sticks.
The City has famously defeated three attempts at a zoning ordinance, opting instead to regulate development through a combination of development codes for private development, transportation and infrastructure requirements, and private covenants between property owners. That’s why it took until April of 1958 before the City enacted its first off-street parking requirements, and 1968 before it established a subdivision code.
Ultimately, this led to an estimated 60 million parking spaces within a city of 2.3 million people. Shockingly this is more than 30 parking spaces for every man, woman, and child who lives in the city—whether they drive or not.
As time went on, these parking regulations became more stringent, propelled more by residents who didn’t want cars parked in front of their homes than by planning. Ultimately, this led to an estimated 60 million parking spaces within a city of 2.3 million people. Shockingly this is more than 30 parking spaces for every man, woman, and child who lives in the city—whether they drive or not.
About ten years ago, Houston’s leaders began to rethink this auto-centric approach. In 2017, during Mayor Sylvester Turner’s address to the Transportation Advisory Group, he boldly spoke of our need to become a more multi-modal city—calling for a “paradigm shift.” Along with updating the city’s bike plan he focused on improved pedestrian realms and initiated the Walkable Places and Transit-Oriented Development ordinance. For the first time, Houston had context-sensitive parking regulations, based on a property’s proximity to our light-rail system.
Upon becoming Director of the Planning & Development Department, I took two steps that pushed the City of Houston even further. I persuaded the Mayor to make Houston a Vision Zero City. He immediately embraced the initiative. Clearly understanding that if his paradigm shift was to be successful, we needed to protect the lives of our residents. Additionally, I advocated for and received permission to hire the City’s first Chief Transportation Officer. We were
lucky enough to hire David Fields, a well-respected transportation planning professional with significant experience in bringing innovative and equitable projects to fruition.
With these two items in place, we are now looking at the City through a multi-modal lens and rethinking all of our right-of-way spaces. Ultimately making Houston safer for everyone, regardless of how they choose to travel. We took encouragement from cities like Buffalo, Atlanta, and, most recently, Austin, all of which had recently reduced or eliminated their parking requirements. We also had the support of our Planning Commission; in the years between 2013 and 2019, our commission had approved an annual average of 14 variances for off-street parking reductions, often for reductions totaling as much as 40% of the required amount.
Thinking we had the wind at our back, my department embarked on what would be a three-year effort to update residential development regulations with an eye toward affordability, equity, and walkability. Central to that effort was the elimination of some residential parking regulations. Establishing a Market-Based Parking component would remove minimum requirements for residential properties in transit-rich areas: those within short walking distances of rail stations, high-frequency bus stops, or high-comfort bikeways.
It immediately became an uphill battle. The developers who should have cheered our efforts didn’t. Eliminating parking requirements didn’t matter to them; they were going to build parking, with or without the requirement. And the neighborhoods hated it for many of the same decades-old reasons. Despite the extensive community engagement, meeting with and listening to dozens of neighborhood groups, the opposition galvanized against reducing the parking requirements. Minutes prior to the first public hearing on the proposed changes, the market-based parking component was removed from the final package for lack of Council support.
People don’t always understand the consequences of their opinions. What does maintaining parking requirements in areas that have significant multi-modal options accomplish? One, it ensures that residents have incentives to drive and ignore the transit options that are available.
This puts more cars on the street, increases traffic headaches, and reduces safety for all other modes. Two, it wastes both public and private money. For the developer, parking is expensive; recent studies indicate that parking structures cost between $30,000 and $40,000 per space.
_______________
Margaret Wallace Brown oversees the City’s regional and community-based planning efforts, including land-development standards and neighborhood character preservation programs, including historic preservation. She also leads the strategic transportation planning and community planning efforts, including the Mayor’s signature Complete Communities Initiative. She also oversees the City’s geographic mapping efforts. She tweets at @margwallbrown.