People and parking requirements: Residential attitudes and day-to-day consequences of a land use policy shift towards sustainable mobility

Abstract

A land use policy shift is taking place in a growing number of cities regarding parking, whereby a conventional supplymanagement approach is being replaced with a parking management approach. As part of this policy shift, manycities are lowering their parking requirements. This study analysed changes in car use, car ownership, spatial parkingpatterns and the consequences for the everyday life of residents in a housing area with a relatively restrictive parkingrequirement in Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden. The housing area, a concrete example of howlowering parking requirements can be used to achieve targets on reduced car use and sustainable urbandevelopment, is used to discuss how parking policy should be applied to achieve the desired effect. The results showthat the consequences of the restrictive requirement was paradoxically small in the study area. In practice, therequirement did not result in a decrease in the number of parking spaces, because e.g. of access to parking inneighbouring residential areas. This shows how important it is to adopt a holistic approach in parking policy, by e.g.introducing more restrictive parking requirements in parallel with other measures, such as raising parking charges anddecreasing the number of public parking spaces. It also shows that planning of parking must be coordinated with otherurban planning functions. Otherwise, the actual contribution of a shift in parking policy to the development of a moreenvironmentally friendly transport system and city risks being small, despite lower parking requirements.