A commentary by researchers with the Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria, a non-profit, non-partisan and charitable social planning society established in 1936.
When North American society made the conscious decision to pave over paradise, little did we know that the cost of making space for residential car parking would help drive the cost of home ownership to unaffordable levels.
But here we are. And it’s time to tackle this issue head-on.
At some point in the mid-20th century, the automobile rose to prominence and has since dominated our urban centres. We decided upon mandatory parking minimums to ease congestion in our cities, but now, the same policies are suffocating them instead.
With affordability, housing and climate change dominating the recent municipal election, surely now is the time to explore some of the easiest policy changes for getting new housing projects off the ground with a brand new city council.
At this stage, the removal of parking minimums in cities isn’t even a bold or radical move for local elected officials. New York City, Portland, Buffalo and Edmonton, to name just a few, have already done away with them.
And this is for good reason. Even though Victoria has some of the most expensive land costs in the country, most new developments are still required to include parking. It’s estimated that the creation of just one required parking space adds an additional 10 to 15 per cent to a project’s overall development costs.
As our city and region continue to grapple with a climate and affordability crisis, it is time to not only rethink our relationship with parking and the automobile, but the zoning regulations that have created this environment in the first place.
Land in Victoria isn’t cheap, with the average price of a new home sitting at $860,000 last year. That 10 to 15 per cent is a financial burden that we can’t afford to add to most developments in a housing and affordability crisis.
It’s time to end the requirement for new housing projects to adhere to zoning regulations that were designed when the automobile was the dominant form of mobility in our cities.
Aside from affordability, our obsession with paving over every Garry oak meadow this side of the Malahat has exacerbated our appetite for suburban sprawl and dependence on the automobile.
If we are to reach a point of equity in housing, climate justice and mobility, we need to prioritize other modes of travel as well as allowing people to live closer to where they work and play.
The number of individuals in the city who commute by foot, bike and public transit nearly rivals car commuters despite the gap in infrastructure.
If we are truly interested in making it as easy as possible to create as many affordable, dense, walkable neighbourhoods as we can, we should be looking to the lowest-hanging fruit to pave the way out of our car-dependent reality.
We’ve already realized the need for reduced parking requirements for some forms of housing, so why not take the next step in providing more affordable, and equitable homes for Victoria’s residents?
The drawbridge (or ferry ride) to paradise is in no way ready to be lifted. If we are to preserve the beauty that we do have, however, we need to be creating a future vision where communal living, mixed modality and climate resiliency are at the forefront. Removing parking minimums is one of the easiest places to start.
The Community Social Planning Council is holding an online event dedicated to the reduction of parking minimums on Jan. 31.
