Reading: Yes / No / Not Given: Question 2

For decades, zoning codes in cities across North America and much of Europe have required new buildings to include a minimum number of off-street parking spaces, calculated by formulas that vary by land use. The stated purpose was to prevent overspill parking on residential streets, but the practical effect, in my assessment, has been to quietly subsidise car ownership at the expense of almost everything else a city might want to build. A one-bedroom apartment that might otherwise cost relatively little to construct becomes considerably more expensive once a developer is legally obliged to pour concrete for a parking space that may sit empty for most of the day, and that added cost is inevitably passed on to renters and buyers, regardless of whether they own a car.

A growing number of cities, including several that eliminated minimum parking requirements within the last decade, have reported that developers do not stop building parking altogether when the mandate disappears, they simply build the amount that matches actual demand at that specific site, which is often, though not always, less than the old formula demanded. I regard this outcome as evidence that the original requirements were poorly calibrated rather than genuinely necessary, and I would go further: cities that have not yet reformed their parking mandates are wasting land that could otherwise support housing, shops or green space, at a moment when many of the same cities also claim to be facing a housing affordability crisis.

Critics of reform sometimes warn that removing mandates will flood residential streets with parked cars as new buildings free-ride on public kerb space. This is not an unreasonable worry in the abstract, and some neighbourhoods have indeed experienced localised parking pressure after reform. I would argue, however, that kerb-space congestion is best addressed directly, through resident permit schemes or metered pricing, rather than by forcing every new building, whatever its size or location, to build parking it does not need. Reforming the mandate does not require abandoning every other tool a city has for managing its streets.

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer? Write YES, NO or NOT GIVEN.

1. The writer believes minimum parking requirements have mainly served to make housing more affordable for renters and buyers.
2. The writer states that developers typically stop building any parking spaces once minimum requirements are removed.
3. The writer regards the smaller amount of parking built after reform as evidence that the original requirements were poorly calibrated.
4. The writer argues that cities retaining parking mandates are wasting land that could support housing, shops or green space.
5. The writer claims that parking reform, on its own, will completely solve the housing affordability crisis in the cities that adopt it.
6. The writer supports managing kerb-space congestion through tools such as resident permit schemes or metered pricing.
7. The writer believes that reforming parking mandates requires abandoning every other tool a city has for managing its streets.
8. The writer gives the exact percentage by which parking construction has fallen in cities that removed their mandates.