Posts

Shoup on the Wisdom of Eliminating Parking Requirements

Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, was mentioned in a New York Times opinion piece about the hidden consequences of parking requirements. In his book “The High Cost of Free Parking,” Shoup explained that rules that require developers to include a minimum number of parking spaces increase real estate costs. Furthermore, building more parking lots creates more urban sprawl, making cities less walkable and more car-dependent. Parking lots also exacerbate the effects of global warming by creating urban heat islands that absorb and reflect heat. Shoup has also noted that parking requirements worsen inequality by forcing people who can’t afford to drive a car to still pay for parking infrastructure. “People who are too poor to own a car pay more for their groceries to ensure that richer people can park free when they drive to the store,” Shoup wrote. Now, California is considering legislation that would eliminate or reform minimum parking regulations.


Manville on Sharing Wealth of Housing Market

Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville was featured in a Los Angeles Times column about the possibility of a new luxury tax on homes in Los Angeles. The housing market has rewarded many homeowners who have seen their properties quadruple in value before selling. In response, the United to House L.A. initiative has proposed an additional tax on property sales above $5 million that could then be funneled into homelessness prevention. “If the value of your house doubles, that’s not because you did a killer kitchen remodel, it’s because L.A.’s economy took off like a rocket,” Manville said. “Did you personally kickstart the L.A. economy? Impressive as you are, probably you didn’t.” According to Manville, “the community as a whole created that value, and there is no particular reason that you should mop up a big share of it while someone who rents gets punished for it, simply because you were lucky enough to own a house while it happened.”


Shoup Weighs In on NYC Parking Angst

Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, spoke to the New York Times about the recent decision to return to twice-a-week street sweeping in New York City. During the pandemic, street sweeping was reduced to once per week as city services were scaled back. Many New Yorkers welcomed the change, which required them to move their cars just once a week, but others complained that the cleanliness of streets across the city declined. Mayor Eric Adams recently announced that twice-weekly street sweeping would resume, and drivers will once again have to move their cars two times a week to avoid a fine. According to Shoup, car owners in the city are still getting a good deal. “Drivers are complaining that they have to move their car, and they’re parking for free on some of the most valuable land on Earth,” Shoup said.


Stiffer Housing Requirement Will Benefit Angelenos, Monkkonen Says

Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Paavo Monkkonen spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the state’s ruling that Los Angeles must add more than 250,000 homes to its zoning plan. State housing regulators rejected the city’s proposed long-term plan for growth and will require the city to rezone to accommodate the additional quarter-million new homes. City leaders must fix the housing plan by October in order to access billions of dollars in affordable housing grants, which will be necessary to support the growing number of low-income and homeless residents. Monkkonen agreed that the state’s ruling was justifiable given the city’s rejection of more assertive state-led rezoning proposals in favor of greater local control over where growth should go. “Allowing more housing more quickly will benefit Angelenos,” he said. “City officials shouldn’t drag their feet on taking the necessary actions to allow more housing, and should act at the pace that a crisis demands.”


On the Decline and Fall of Parking Requirements

A StreetsBlog article about the evolution of mandatory parking requirements noted that recommendations put forward long ago by Distinguished Research Professor of Urban Planning Donald Shoup are now gaining wide acceptance. Shoup recommended removing off-street parking requirements, allowing developers and businesses to decide how many parking spaces to provide for their customers. He also recommended pricing on-street parking so that one or two spaces will always be left open in order to avoid parking shortages. Finally, he suggested spending parking revenue on public service projects on the metered streets, which would help increase the popularity of demand-based pricing. Many local governments are taking these recommendations seriously and implementing changes. The article cited Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville‘s research on San Diego’s 2019 decision to stop requiring parking for housing near transit, which helped make affordable housing projects more economically viable. As Shoup predicted, parking requirements are quickly being eliminated across the United States.


Shoup on How to Improve Sidewalk Accessibility

Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, authored a Bloomberg CityLab article about the slow progress to repair broken sidewalks in Los Angeles. Roughly 40% of L.A. sidewalks are broken, a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, according to a 2016 class-action lawsuit won by disability rights advocates. Los Angeles is required to spend $1.4 billion over 30 years to fix its sidewalks, but in the first five years of the program, less than 1% have been repaired. “Fortunately, there’s a simple way to ensure that sidewalks will be accessible,” Shoup wrote. “Cities can require that the sidewalk abutting any property must comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act when the property is sold.” Property owners would not have to pay or do anything until they sell their property, and the city can subsidize sidewalk repairs for low-income owners. “A pay-on-exit program may be the fairest and most politically painless way to keep sidewalks accessible,” Shoup concluded.


Leap Weighs In on COVID, Crime in Watts

Adjunct Professor of Social Welfare Jorja Leap spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the rise in homicides during the pandemic and the way that it has affected neighborhoods like Watts in South Los Angeles. Of the 22 men and women killed in Watts in the first 11 months of 2021, 64% of the victims were Black. “Young Black men and families are the hardest hit by the pandemic,” Leap said. “If you’re starving and you feel out of control, you’re more likely to be the victim or the perpetrator of violence.” She pointed out that the COVID case rate in Watts is nearly 30% higher than the overall rate for Los Angeles, and 117 residents have died. After spending over 40 years working in Watts, Leap hopes to see more economic investment to support the community. “We have plenty of investment in social programs in Watts,” Leap said. “Where is the economic structure to give people jobs?”


Manville on Shifting Dynamics of City Life and Work

Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville spoke to CNET about recent changes in living and commuting patterns. The shift to remote work for many during the pandemic accelerated an existing trend of people moving outward to areas surrounding their former homes in big urban centers. “Once you were deprived of the opportunities that a fully open Los Angeles or, for that matter, a fully open San Francisco offered you, it was very hard to justify the cost of housing here,” Manville said. The pandemic has also had a large impact on traffic patterns and use of public transit. At the beginning of the pandemic, “traffic just plummeted to levels we have probably not seen in 100 years,” but congestion and traffic have almost returned to pre-pandemic levels as the economy has reopened, Manville said. The article also cited UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies Director Brian Taylor regarding the variables that lead to traffic congestion.


Single-Family Zoning Causes Harm, Manville Says

Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville joined Detroit Today to discuss the effect of single-family zoning laws on wealth, access and opportunity. In most cities, the majority of residential land is zoned for single-family housing. By preventing non-single-family homes from being constructed in certain areas, Manville noted that single-family zoning hinders access to wealth for new, younger homebuyers, reinforces segregation and exacerbates issues of housing affordability. “My objection has nothing to do with single-family homes themselves,” Manville explained. “It’s the idea that you can have a law saying that nothing else can be built.” In metropolitan areas undergoing growth, single-family zoning drives up the minimum purchase price to be a part of the community, and this barrier has adverse consequences that fall disproportionately on low-income people and people of color. “Regardless of motivation, keeping these barriers in place causes harm, and we would do some good to remove them,” Manville concluded.


Pierce on Municipal Approaches to Heat

Gregory Pierce, co-director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, co-authored an article in Planetizen discussing different cities’ approaches to addressing extreme heat. “People of color and those with lower incomes are disproportionately exposed to heat, and the largest health risks fall on seniors, young children and those with chronic conditions,” Pierce wrote. Climate change has led to an increase in heat-related deaths and hospitalizations. In a recent paper published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Pierce and his co-authors analyzed surveys by California’s Office of Planning and Research to determine what factors influence whether municipalities actively plan for extreme heat and what kinds of heat-related planning and policy innovations they have adopted. The authors recommended making social equity a top priority in heat adaptation planning. They called for engaging with local communities and directing investments where they are needed most to eliminate thermal inequity.

Read the article Read the full paper