100 people want to live in a neighborhood but there are 20 homes. The wealth of these people follow a standard bell curve.

Who gets to live in the neighborhood?

The next year the city passes a policy that leads to the creation of 40 more homes.

What happens to the price of homes, again with a standard curve where everyone has a varying max budget

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It is worth noting that there if a regional housing crisis and increased demand for walkable neighborhoods. This example assumes demand is constant. The solution is not to prevent Cambridge from building more housing, but to encourage/force surrounding towns to build more housing.

The population has simply grown and we haven’t built homes to keep up

Just the source of the income that pays for my dwelling.

Let the free market decide then bozo

The only possible outcome is not a decrease in prices. It may happen temporarily, but within 5 year span, they prices for the same Apts would go up.

Also, if nothing is done to control rent prices, everything will keep going up and we,ll end up with another NYC situation and plus.

You're an absolute fucking king

Mandated parking adds 50-60k to the price of each unit, 100-250 dollars in rent, and also restricts the supply of available housing due to how much space these lots take up.

The only possible outcome is a decrease in prices. Whether or not the impact is big is unknown

Thank you for your work on this councilor.

Yea, you can pay for it if you want it. Why do you expect real estate to be handed to you for free?

The statistic comes the city council itself clown. If you have a problem with it then email them.

Glad you fall back on to the “everything else sucks because all we’ve designed for is cars, so we can never have anything else ever again” argument.

The minimums have been repealed. I suggest you vote in the next election if you’re so upset about it.

" the city itself found that 30-50% of parking spots are unused." is preposterous on its face. Where are these spots? What days and times of days are they unused? For what duration? Are there reliable transit options to/from these spaces? No. Otherwise parking where it counts in Cambridge - within a short walk of the vast majority of units - wouldn't be such a royal PITA.

Also, no. For NYC, he was mostly on the public transit side (think airports and light rail). So, no. He was very much trying to fix what Robert Moses and his ilk wrought. He also knew that we live in the real world where stuff already exists. Or doesn't.

The thing is you're living in a fantasy world. You keep striving for perfect, as if we're building cities from the ground up from scratch. Except we're not. Let's be real. The T absolutely sucks. It just does. Rail, buses, commuter rail. It all completely sucks. And bicycling isn't realistic for most commuters for 3-4 months every year (and I say that as someone who rides nearly 365 days/year). People giving up their cars en masse in Cambridge just isn't a realistic outcome, sorry.

Yeah. This is where I am. I'm skeptical this will have any effect on pricing.

There's no loophole with this. Developers will now be free to build or not build parking. That will lower development costs, but not make new development cheap. It's a good step towards more affordable construction(way more zoning relief is still needed) and just better overall urban design.

As someone who doesn’t and will never own a car, this helps me. It makes housing cheaper.

Sideswipes and doorings happen as a result of poor bike infrastructure, not because people don’t have parking in their buildings.

Idk who you are, but if you have the powered to, don't let develops take advantage of this and find loopholes that end up with housing/buildings far off from being affordable.

Not a developer. I don’t want parking minimums because parking goes underutilized in Cambridge and it makes the cost of living higher for everyone, including those that don’t own cars.

Inman Square isn’t a town on 128, thankfully

Too bad automatic enforcement is illegal in Massachusetts

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Am I just insane or are people talking about a different Central Square here? Like I get that seeing homeless people may make you feel uncomfortable but people here are describing it like it’s a damn war zone.

Your father was a city planning engineer, so of the the generation of city planners whose single minded goal was to maximize car usage and infrastructure in cities? You realize that generation of “City planning” Is how we ended up in this mess, right?

The whole premise of your argument continues to rely on your belief that everyone that lives here owns a car which is factually untrue.

as I posted elsewhere, the city itself found that 30-50% of parking spots are unused.

Cambridge has an explicit policy outlined in numerous laws passed by the council to reduce the number of vehicles in the city. Restricting supply and giving people other options is part of the point. Sorry.

Such a fan of yours!!!! Keep up the awesome work.

>Except that those studies don't control for available off-site options e.g. the density of paid parking lots and garages, the reliability and ubiquity and usefulness of public transportation, and the density of housing in general. Father was a city planning engineer (and architect) so am very familiar with this stuff.

As I posted above. Turns out supply is in fact complicated when it cannot be economically provided.

Except that those studies don't control for available off-site options e.g. the density of paid parking lots and garages, the reliability and ubiquity and usefulness of public transportation, and the density of housing in general. Father was a city planning engineer (and architect) so am very familiar with this stuff.

There's a reason Manhattan works so well without car ownership.

I think there’s a good deal more than “some accommodation” for people with cars in this town, even without parking minimums :p