Towns and cities that pursued a vision to reclaim their roads and public spaces for living, walking, and bicycling have sparked a shift with widespread benefits in public wealth, health, and happiness, new research reveals.
The majority of American cities have minimum parking requirements (MPRs) in their zoning laws, but for downtown areas with good public transit, using up prime land on parkades fragments the city core, writes the American Planning Association (APA) in a recent blog post. To create more connected downtowns, many cities are scrapping these parking requirements.
The strategy is a winner, two University of Illinois urban planners found last year, on studying parking deregulation in the college town of Champaign, Illinois. In 2015, Champaign removed MPRs from around one university campus, and some residential areas in downtown and midtown—a move aimed at improving housing affordability by cutting parkade construction costs and encouraging car-free living.
With the MPRs removed, housing developers used “perceived market demand” to determine how much parking they should build—and they built far less. Earlier, developers had been overbuilding parking—108% of what the regulation required. Regulations removed, they built 62% fewer parking spaces.
Where the original MPR of one parking space per two bedrooms called for 3,975 spaces, developers built only 1,833, a reduction that led to lower development costs and boosted downtown density.
“Taking a conservative estimate of US$20,000 in construction costs per parking space in Champaign, the repeal of MPRs helped developers save approximately US$43 million to $49 million,” writes the APA. Since construction costs are reflected in a home’s final ticket price, such savings should “indirectly benefit tenants.”
The repeal was also a boon to density. Under the MPR, a 600-square-foot living space might end up requiring 330 square feet of parking with circulation areas factored in. Residential unit density in the deregulated districts of Champaign increased by 79% when MPRs were removed, though a portion of this deepened density may also owe to the removal of an “open space requirement,” the APA says.
Removing MPRs was also a boon to city coffers, with long-term parking permit sales increasing 39% between 2016 and 2021. “In the long run, the city could invest these funds in pedestrian, cycling, and public transportation infrastructure,” the APA suggests.
High Returns from Low-Traffic Areas
Research is increasingly starting to measure the benefits of redesigning cities to support diverse modes of transportation, not just cars. One study—a six-year analysis of travel behaviours following major investments in active travel infrastructure in three boroughs of outer London in the United Kingdom—found striking health cost savings of investing to encourage biking and walking. Generating C$1.7 billion in “health economic benefits” for a program cost of C$1.7 million, the Outer London schemes suggest that low traffic neighbourhoods “may have very high value for money”—as much as 50:1 to 200:1, the authors say.
And each year, low-traffic schemes prevent 37 deaths and over half a million sick days, reports The Progress Playbook, citing further findings from the study.
Kids Grew Active in Low-Emissions Zones
Five years on from London’s full implementation of its ultra-low emissions zone, which charges polluting cars a fee, a study reveals that within one year of the zone taking effect, 40% of young children (aged 6 to 9) involved in the study had switched from being driven to school to getting there themselves on foot or bicycles.
The research focused on analyzing how lower pollution shapes young lungs, but participants were invited to complete questionnaires alongside their annual health assessments, writes Grist. The responses will give researchers insights on activity levels, mental health, and other ancillary outcomes to be analyzed in further studies.
“Walking and biking and scootering to school is better for the child, better for the family, and better for the environment,” Alison Macpherson, an epidemiologist at York University in Toronto who was not involved in the study, told Grist.
“It’s a great way for children to start their day,” she said. “You can imagine just being thrown in a car and thrown out of a car is not the most calming way.” Active transportation is a boon to concentration and therefore, potentially, academic performance, Macpherson said. It is also a serious counterweight to rising levels of childhood obesity.
Quieter Streets Improve Health
Low-traffic neighbourhoods are also blessedly quiet—a sonic transformation that has profound psycho-social benefits, writes David Zipper in an op-ed for Bloomberg, marveling at the lively street scenes of Leipzig, Germany, owing to traffic reforms from the 1990s.
“Although still rare in North America, car-free and car-light neighbourhoods have grown common in Europe, established in cities like Paris, Brussels, and Pontevedra, Spain,” Zipper writes. He adds that “boosters often tout the improvements in air quality and road safety when street space is used for sidewalks, bike lanes, and outdoor public space instead of transporting and storing motor vehicles.”
Less is said about the restoration of a healing absence of traffic noise.
But traffic noise isn’t just irritating, or sometimes downright obnoxious, writes Zipper: it is lethal to one’s health.
Among an “ominous” litany of the health impacts of car noise, a multi-year Danish study of two million people aged over 60 found that “fully 11% of dementia diagnoses could be attributed to roadway noise.”
And the harms caused by traffic noise are by no means evenly spread throughout the population, at least not in the United States. A paper published last year in Nature “found that urban neighbourhoods that were subjected to racially discriminatory redlining practices decades ago still experience louder noise today.”
Support Grows for Fewer Cars
Back in London, an official study of low-traffic neighbourhoods, commissioned by then-prime minister Rishi Sunak, found that the schemes are “generally popular and effective,” with twice as many locals supporting them as opposing them, writes the Progressive Playbook, citing the Guardian.
This finding was a rebuke to officials plotting against low-traffic neighbourhoods. “While green measures are increasingly used as a wedge issue by populists seeking to stimulate opposition from a loud minority, our experience shows that the silent majority approve, and even those who were initially unsure tend to become accepting over time,” wrote C40 Cities in a late July LinkedIn post.
“Opposition peaks as implementation approaches, but once policies are in place and their benefits become evident, support typically rebounds.”
