Parking Reform Network Parking Lot Map: “Explore how much land cities dedicate to parking in over 50 cities included on the map below. Click the drop-down icon in the upper right corner to select a city and use the popup info card on the right to learn more about the city and its parking reform status. You can join the mapping volunteer team here and send feedback to [email protected]. Increasing Parking Decreases Walkability: What makes a great city? For many, one key component is walkability, which is becoming increasingly scarce in the United States. Over the last century, most cities have implemented minimum parking requirements mandating that all new developments have abundant free parking. As a result, our cities became covered in a sea of parking spaces, parking lots, and parking structures. With all this parking, little land was left for anything else, making housing more expensive, less dense, and farther apart. We found that walk score, an analysis of a city’s walkability, decreases significantly with more parking in the central city. It’s clear that if we want to have walkable cities, we need cities that are less parkable.Parking Lots are Opportunities for Growth: On average, 20% of all land in the city centers we analyzed was dedicated solely to parking. This parking is often clustered around main streets, office districts, and historical cores, creating a barrier around the city’s most valuable and walkable areas that limits residential and commercial growth. Cities with high parking have ample land that could be devoted to building walkable neighborhoods, vibrant parks, or office districts. Suppose all parking in all 50 city centers analyzed was converted to residential, at a density of 40,000 people per square mile. In that case, we could provide enough housing for a quarter of a million people.”