Global benchmark: how cities and states are dropping parking minimums

Benchmark note · Parking policy

Almost every Indian city sets a minimum number of car parking spaces that a new building must provide. Elsewhere, that rule is being dropped quickly.

What has changed abroad

• London, 2004. The London Plan required boroughs to replace minimums with maximums. Research by Zhan Guo and colleagues found parking supply in new development fell by about 40% compared with what the old minimums would have required: 143,893 fewer spaces between 2004 and 2010. Almost all of that came from removing minimums, not from the maximums (2.2% of the drop).
• Buffalo, 2017. The Buffalo Green Code made it the first major US city to remove off-street parking minimums citywide. Projects over 5,000 sq ft submit a transport demand management plan instead.
• Mexico City, 2017. Minimums were turned into maximums in the construction code.
• California, 2022. Assembly Bill 2097 stopped cities enforcing parking minimums on most projects within half a mile of major public transit.
• Illinois, December 2025. The People Over Parking Act bars local minimums within half a mile of a transit hub or an eighth of a mile of a transit corridor.
• Virginia, from 1 July 2026. Near transit, localities may require no more than 0.5 spaces per flat in multifamily or mixed-use buildings.
• North Carolina, July 2026. Minimum off-street parking mandates were ended for most of the state from January 2027, with coastal municipalities excluded.

According to the Parking Reform Network, as reported by Stateline in July 2026, at least 14 US states have enacted 34 laws reducing or removing minimums since 2019, and 116 cities have removed all minimums citywide since 2017.

Why it matters for India

Minimums decide how much of every new building is given to cars, and buyers pay for that space whether or not they own a car. The international trend is not to ban parking but to let developers, buyers and transit access decide how much is needed, with limits in the most transit-rich areas.

Questions for Indian cities

1. Should parking minimums be removed within walking distance of metro stations, as California, Illinois and Virginia have done?
2. Should central areas move to maximums, as London and Mexico City did?
3. Who measures the result? London's reform is known to have worked because researchers counted what was built. Indian cities rarely publish that data.

Sources

• Parking Reform Atlas: London parking maximums (and minimums abolition)
• Lincoln Institute: Elimination of parking minimums (Buffalo)
• ITDP: How Mexico City became a leader in parking reform
• California HCD: AB 2097 technical assistance
• Illinois People Over Parking Act
• Holland & Knight: New Virginia law caps parking minimums near transit
• Smart Cities Dive: Parking minimums axed in most of North Carolina
• CT Mirror / Stateline: Cities and states target parking minimums

About this note: desk research by the WA Foundation research desk, using the published sources listed above. Figures are reported as given by those sources. This is not original fieldwork and has not been externally peer reviewed. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with credit to WA Foundation.