Parking Minimums are Stupid. Parking Maximums are Stupid. Parking Minimals are Good.

Berkeley voted to remove parking minimums from its zoning code, 9-0, in a landmark decision. I got downvoted to oblivion pointing out that this isn't good enough.

Last week, Berkeley’s City Council voted to remove parking minimums from its zoning code, 9-0. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be parking at all attached to new developments; it does mean that parking will no longer be required. It’s a landmark decision for a city (in a state) that’s been lambasted for years for stymieing progressive planning policy in the primordial soup of progressivism, sort of.

(Sidebar, real quick, is this amazing take on the incoherent Bay Area Progressivism from Zelda Bronstein in Dissent: “The paradox begins to disappear once you recognize that the city’s famous grassroots activism is mostly history.”)

Berkeley, CA…that’s the Bay Bridge and SF in the background. Photo by Cedric Letsch on Unsplash

I’m for this. I think that zoning is more violent than not toward ideological and/or market-driven planning and the well-being of people’s ability to secure a place to live. I just don’t think parking maximums are the answer. Reddit tells me I’m wrong.