Document Type

Article

Abstract

Development in Dallas would be more compact and multi-modal if the city refocuses its parking policies away from parking quantity to parking quality. To validate this hypothesis, this professional report compares and contrasts parking policies and best practices of municipalities that have adopted alternatives to standard minimum parking requirements to draw suggestions to present to the City of Dallas. Current parking policy in Dallas has a simple minimum parking requirement (MPR) based on the size and type of use, calculated by recommended industry standards circa 1950 and adjusted through the mid 1980's as automobile ownership has increased. This has made the development of Dallas in areas developed after the 1950's resemble the suburbs. Since Dallas aims to encourage the development of walkable communities, regulation change is needed. Dallas, like many major cities, has pockets with alternatives to minimum parking requirements to encourage growth in older areas but these areas have specialized and unique codes that do not translate well to other areas of the city and are prevented, through district boundaries, from doing so. Further, Dallas has almost 900 planned development districts (PDs), many of which have specialized parking regulations. If there are so many PDs in Dallas, there must be a deficiency in its base development code. This study aims to propose a change to the Dallas Development Code outside of its central business district to reduce its focus on the quantity of parking to allow it to instead concentrate on the form, design, and function of parking. This professional report compares parking requirements of selected municipalities that have adopted alternatives to standardized minimum parking requirements and responses from a questionnaire to better understand the impacts of alternative parking requirements. The gathered data is thus used to form a set of suggestions for alternative parking policies for Dallas.

Disciplines

Architecture | Urban, Community and Regional Planning

Publication Date

12-1-2012

Language

English

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