End Parking Mandates and Subsidies - Overview

We understand the harm parking mandates and subsidies create for families, business owners, and small-scale developers. That’s why we’ve been a leading voice against parking minimums for over a decade.

Over the last few years, Strong Towns has helped dozens of communities reduce or eliminate parking minimums. We even helped create a map of cities across the U.S. and Canada that have made this reform (200 and counting). When we started our annual #BlackFridayParking campaign in 2014, the thesis—that we are overbuilt on parking, even on the busiest shopping day of the year—was outside the mainstream. Now it is becoming accepted wisdom. Ending parking mandates and subsidies is just common sense.

OUR COMMUNITIES DESERVE BETTER

Parking mandates take away the flexibility and agency that homeowners, developers, and business owners deserve.

A LOSING INVESTMENT

Parking minimums cost the public in the form of extra infrastructure that must service all that parking—but without the taxable value to recoup public investment.

UNLOCK YOUR CITY’S POTENTIAL

Ending parking mandates and subsidies will free up vast swaths of land that can be used more productively.

Together, we can unlock opportunities for stronger and more financially resilient cities. Together, we can end parking mandates and subsidies.