Good morning, 2023. In urban & suburban Oregon, it's no longer illegal to create a home or a job; to reactivate an old vacant building; or to just depave part of your property
without having to provide more auto parking than you actually need.
Conversation
The specifics:
In OR's 8 largest metro areas (48 cities & urban parts of 5 counties; 2/3 of OR population):
1. Parking mandates can be no higher than 1/home
2. For homes of 750sqft or less (more than half of new apts), parking is fully optional
3...
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...Parking counts are also fully flexible for:
- all regulated-affordable homes priced to stay affordable to people whose incomes are at or below 80% of median
- all residential & commercial sites within 1/2 mile of a transit line where 4+ buses arrive in the peak hour
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- all sites within 3/4 mile of a rail transit stop
- if your jurisdiction has no buses that arrive 4+ in the peak hour, then within 1/2 mile of the most frequent bus line you do have as long as its frequency hits once per hour
Let's see some maps!
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Starting today, parking spaces are optional in the parts of Beaverton marked "direct radius." The city is on track to simply remove mandates citywide later this year.
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Starting today, parking spaces are optional in the parts of Corvallis marked in green. The city is on track to simply remove mandates citywide later this year.
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Starting today, parking spaces are optional in the parts of Eugene marked in green.
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Here's 's 2-page summary of the state reform and why it's a great idea.
For the last 50-70 years, mandatory parking has made it illegal for cities to gradually evolve to become more walkable. It's a major reason that stopped happening.
sightline.org/wp-content/upl
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These rules don't muscle anyone out of a car; people can still create as much parking as they need. But now, people needn't create MORE than they need.
And you won't have to pay, every time you buy anything, for empty parking spaces that have to be there just in case.
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(There are new caps on big surface parking lots in designated climate-friendly areas. Honestly I don't love this cap; lemme know if you agree.)
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Finally, the main reason I'm up on NYD to write this thread:
Do you know of a potential project, especially a housing project, that these reforms will allow to exist? Sightline wants to write about it.
Here's one we covered in September:
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. & I spent the last year telling stories about why these reforms would be good. Now that they're in place, we're eager to start telling the story of their success.
Help us out, won't you?
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Evolution is slow. It'll take decades for cities of all types to gradually become more walkable. It won't happen everywhere, and it'll only happen if people actually want it.
But the door to that gradual change is now open again. That's something to celebrate in 2023. 🥳
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