| Most of the people who drive for Uber use privately owned cars, do they not? It seems like any restriction would hinder them. In my city, only registered cabs are allowed on the streets of the main shopping areas. "making it harder for shoppers to access stores" The density of people walking or on bike is much higher than in a car. Fewer required parking spaces means it's easier to walk from store to store. Remember, most parking lots are empty because they are designed for the busy time of the year. Most parking requirements are per-building, not per-area, so there's even more wasted space. That wasted space raises rents for brick and mortar stores in a way that online retailers don't have to worry about. "businesses are forced to actively police their parking areas against use by non-customers" Nonsense. Get rid of the parking requirement and those businesses which don't want to police their parking areas simply won't have a parking area. While if there's really demand, parking lots and parking garages are a way to shift the costs to those who do want to police their parking arenas. "while living in American cities which are entirely designed to require car travel" That is true. But the cities can't change if the current parking restrictions stay. Let the market decide who pays - not some central planning committee. As often pops up here, The Netherlands up until the 1970s was also increasingly designed around cars. With deliberate effort, and over time, that's changed. "Nijmegen’s center city wasn’t always car-free—cue grainy footage of midcentury sedans cruising past charming steepled rooftops. “The main square used to be a parking lot,” Sjors Van Duren, the program director of Velo-City, tells Clarence Eckerson, the film’s director. But since the 1970s, the city has replaced the downtown’s auto-centric streets with pedestrian pathways and bike lanes." - https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/07/it-takes-more... |