Smart Growth Resource Library

Parking Spaces, Community Places: Finding Balance through Smart Growth Solutions

This report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) highlights proven approaches that balance parking with broader community goals.

Current codes typically apply inflexible minimums that ignore community and developer priorities including environmental quality and human health. An oversupply of unnecessary parking wastes money and creates places that degrade water quality and encourage excess driving and air emissions. The highlighted solutions cover a range of supply management, demand management, and pricing strategies.

The approaches described in this report can help communities explore new, flexible parking policies that can encourage growth and balance parking needs with their other goals. The EPA developed this guide for local government officials, planners, and developers in order to:

• demonstrate the significance of parking decisions in development patterns;
• illustrate the environmental, financial, and social impact of parking policies;
• describe strategies for balancing parking with other community goals; and
• provide case studies of places that are successfully using these strategies.

The report begins with a discussion of the demand for parking and a review of the costs of parking. Subsequent sections detail innovative techniques and case studies explain how they have been used to solve parking problems in specific places.

Communities have found that combinations of parking pricing, shared parking, demand management, and other techniques have helped them create vibrant places while protecting environmental quality and still providing for necessary vehicle storage.

70 pages (3.5mb); available online as a PDF document at the resource link below. Information on ordering print copies is also provided at the resource link below.

Resource: http://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/parking.htm

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