Parking Requirements Bringing Indianapolis Down

There’s a lot going on around the Streetsblog Network today. From A Place of Sense, in Indianapolis, comes a post about that city’s parking policies. A developer there, seeking to renovate an abandoned apartment building in an area with many parking lots, requested a variance from the city’s requirement that developments provide their own off-street parking. The request was denied, and the building will remain vacant for the foreseeable future.

The post is particularly timely in the light of the new report about the importance of sensible parking policy to livable cities that was released yesterday by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). Here’s what A Place of Sense has to say:

Parking requirements are keeping this building vacant. (Photo: via A Place of Sense)

I think it is time that Indianapolis accepts that off-street parking
requirements are the bane of true urban renewal. The minimum parking
requirements are a senseless way to devalue our Central Business District. They are an
existential threat to urban life, and therefore the core identity of
Indianapolis. …

This situation is yet another lost opportunity for a representative of
the City of Indianapolis to address the real infrastructural problems
that have ruined the city.  Indianapolis I love you, but you’re
bringing me down.

More from around the network: The WashCycle and FABB Blog on proposed cuts to spending on bicycle infrastructure in Maryland and Virginia. New Geography has a post that asks, What is the answer to the suburban question? And Boston Biker links to some delightful Hungarian PSAs promoting cycling (one of them is even mildly racy).