Chicago, IL
Housing, Transportation | 2025
Exploring the effects of zoning parking minimums on parking spot utilization and housing development.
In 2022, the City of Chicago passed the Connected Communities Ordinance, which aims to advance transit-oriented development in part by reducing parking minimums in transit-served locations. Requiring more off-street parking spaces than necessary can make development more expensive, limit housing density, and further contribute to car-centric communities. Center for Neighborhood Technology seeks to use the Connected Communities Ordinance as a natural experiment to understand the extent to which the location of a housing development and the requirement of parking minimums are associated with the utilization of parking spots.
Staff at Center for Neighborhood Technology will collect parking utilization data across 10 developments built before and after the Connected Communities Ordinance passed to see how more flexible parking requirements have affected off-street parking utilization and parking patterns in the surrounding neighborhoods. The analysis will incorporate characteristics of the site and the surrounding geography, including zoning, rental costs, occupancy, and point-in-time counts of parked cars. Data collection will be accompanied by conversations with stakeholders including residents, developers, and community groups interested in creating more affordable development on the South and West Sides of Chicago. These findings will appear in a publicly available final report.
Through data collection and analysis, Center for Neighborhood Technology hopes to inform community-based organizations, nonprofit partners, residents, and elected officials on the impact of parking minimums. The report will also provide crucial data on the potential effects of a new ordinance being considered by Chicago’s City Council that would further expand parking flexibility for new construction and rehab or reuse developments near public transit. Community conversations about the analysis will bring diverse perspectives into discussions of parking utilization and build momentum for updating parking requirements to boost affordable housing production, create safer and more walkable neighborhoods, and allow parking to align with market demand.