In a landmark vote, the Anchorage Assembly has voted unanimously to eliminate minimum parking requirements citywide. The proposed repeal of the parking requirements united Assembly members on both ends of the political spectrum, as it was championed by David Volland, a liberal, and co-sponsored by Kevin Cross, a conservative with a background in real estate. Mayor Dave Bronson, a conservative who has often found himself at odds with the liberal-majority Assembly, is also a supporter of the repeal and took to Twitter after the repeal's passing to write that "there's no daylight between myself and the Assembly when it comes to the need for housing."
The citywide repeal of minimum parking requirements actually represents a major leap forward for the city. Initially, the city's planning department drafted an ordinance calling for parking reform to only certain sections of the city. As this blog has noted in years past, efforts at zoning reform have usually focused on midtown and downtown Anchorage, with some attention also given to creating various "town centers" across the Anchorage Bowl. As the Sightline Institute notes, however, coverage of the relaxed regulations was extended citywide following input from members of the Assembly.
While this is of course fantastic news, it does not mean that the wide barren swaths of asphalt between the island buildings of midtown Anchorage will fold overnight. It does, however, mean that we may see more creative uses of the existing parking lots littered throughout the city. With minimum parking requirements mandating that a property fit enough parking under a scenario of absolute maximum building occupany, many parking spaces are left untouched throughout the year. Thanks to the repeal, much of this unused space can instead become developable land for housing and offices in prime locations in the city. It was with the urgent crisis of the city's housing shortage in the backdrop, after all, that city leaders were able to pass this dramatic repeal. AK_Urban, a Twitter user who writes about Anchorage and its urban issues, made this excellent image that envisions new housing being built on the parking lot belonging to the Century 16 theater in midtown, under a scenario in which parking requirements are lifted.
Unfortunately, even with no parking minimums, there will continue to be new developments that will voluntarily include new parking spots. Even Elizabeth Place — a new apartment building that was highly praised for reintroducing housing into the heart of downtown Anchorage, an area of the city that already does not require any parking — contains new parking spaces. The continued need to voluntarily supply parking highlights the deeper systemic problem of automobile dependency, which was compounded through the decades by minimum parking requirements and traffic engineers prioritizing the smooth travel of cars over all other modes of transportation. It was very easy to leave the boundaries of downtown Anchorage half a century ago and create car-centric haphazard development to the point that now the vast majority of its population cannot imagine getting by without a car. It will be slow going and will require decades of work and new development to make these areas outside of downtown into actual, livable places. But the citywide end to minimum parking requirements is certainly a leap forward in the right direction.
