Salon's article on how parking regulations are Ruining America is interesting stuff. I didn't know, for instance, that parking regulations tend to demand four spaces for every 1,100 square feet of office space, which means you can't build structures very close together, effectively ending any hopes of a Main Street-style drag. I'd never much thought about the fact that malls and churches build parking to accommodate their busiest days of the year, leaving their lots empty most of the time. And apparently, cities are noticing these distortions. "Some cities, like Seattle and Petaluma, Calif., are loosening or chucking their minimum parking requirements. Great Britain found that minimum parking requirements bred such bad land-use policies that the nation recently outlawed them entirely." Take that!
Of course, building insufficient parking just leads drivers to circle around endlessly, causing gridlock and pollution (a recent study in Park Slope, Brooklyn found 45 percent of the drivers on the road were looking for parking). You need to push towards either different parking patterns or less driving. So some cities are experimenting with increasing prices the closer you get to the destination. If folks know the parking five blocks out is free and plentiful, while the parking near the mall is costly and rare, they begin to adjust. Additionally, it's not a bad idea to cause some discomfort in the short-term: That's how you build pressure for public transportation options (which can be funded, in part, by the new parking fees).
