The city of Dallas is considering eliminating parking minimums and instead might leave decisions about parking up to developers.
The Zoning Ordinance Committee voted in January to advance the proposal to the City Plan Commission.
While critics worry it could increase the number of cars parked on the street and make parking more difficult to find, proponents say the update to the decades-old parking ordinance would cut down on unused space and help the city grow economically.
Now, an environmental and social justice group says it could also improve quality of life.
Jay Hamilton with Sunrise Movement Dallas spoke with KERA's Growth and Infrastructure reporter Pablo Arauz Peña about the group's campaign for the city to prioritize people over parking.
Pablo Arauz Peña: Tell me about Sunrise Movement, Dallas' parking reform campaign.
Jay Hamilton: So in cities like San Diego or in Austin, they have moved to eliminate parking minimums, and what that's done is it's reduced the cost, actually, of rent for people living in the city. And in particular in Dallas, we are a car dependent city, if you didn't notice on the freeways, right? And what that looks like is 25% of like our space in the city comes up to parking. So for us, two things that we're asking for in our parking campaign is to eliminate parking minimum requirements with no exemptions to the current bill, and that these spaces in the future should be used to build affordable housing and create green spaces, because that's the ultimate goal, like parking minimums, eliminations like the bare minimum.
What does parking reform have to do with climate change?
So if you think about, like, the way that we think about space right now, right? And the way we think about space is very car dependent, or really consumerism first, right? So in that, like people are constantly driving cars, right? That hurts the climate. We need to process, continue to put different things out that hurts the climate. I mean, even the idea of creating concrete like it costs so much money, it takes up so much space to have concrete, because it plays into our heat index. Dallas has one of the highest heat indexes in the country, and it continues to heat up. So if you think about the different people living in the city, or people who are homeless in the city, who are being impacted by heat, who are dying from heat. So to eliminate parking minimums, right? We start to think about the city in a different way, as opposed to being car dependent. What is it like to be walkable?
You've told me that you've had a personal experience with housing and affordability in Dallas. Can you tell me more about that?
When I was a child, I lived off 75 in Walnut Hill. And, you know, growing up, I mean, I didn't, you know when you know parking or organizing — things like that, but living over there, in this area, like we had apartments, and people live over there, we could walk to different places. But since then, those apartments have, part of it, have been torn down and pushed back to put up storefronts. So now they're, like, newer, nicer, kind of gentrified storefronts, right? Like, you know, so people can shop at, and then we have parking lots, right? So now, you know, it becomes this thing, like, like, the parking lots and shopping becomes the things over the people.
What impact has that had on you?
The city becomes unaffordable to people who've lived here. So, like, for current residents, you can't even live in a city anymore, like you've been pushed out. And you've either been pushed out for like, consumerism, right? Or for folks who aren't even from Dallas to come and live in the city, right? Which we know we see happening in major metropolitan areas across the country, but in particular in Dallas, that changes the makeup, right? So different areas or pockets of the city who had these rich traditions, either in South Dallas or Deep Ellum and these different areas, and even where I live in North Dallas, right? It just doesn't look like that anymore, right? It looks like people come in to shop in the city, or like the city is for consumerism, or the city is for like, you know, entertainment, whereas this used to be a place where people, to like live, thrive, and did all their things in one space.
If the city does decide to eliminate and reduce parking minimums, in other words, if your campaign is successful, what comes next?
Yeah, so I mean, once we can eliminate parking minimums, because we will win this campaign, just putting that out there — we just want to continue to keep organizing, right? And what that looks like is working with folks in the city, working with other organizations in the city, to continue to provide support to fund a city that we want. So like our ultimate goal is to have affordable homes in a walkable city. So if we're no longer thinking about like parking lots, like, what does it look like to reuse that space for a home, or reuse that space to make it more walkable for people to have access, or expand on a light rail or expand things like, you know, where we aren't car dependent, we can be people, right? You know, like, you know, people over parking. And that's what we're thinking about in this space.
Pablo Arauz Peña is KERA’s growth and infrastructure reporter. Got a tip? Email Pablo at parauzpena@kera.org. You can follow him on X @pabloaarauz.
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