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A small Canadian city just passed a package of progressive bike and car parking reforms rarely seen in a single North American community, and the policymakers behind it hope it will serve as a model for other micro-metros in the U.S.
On April 26, the city council of Kingston, Ontario, signed off on a new zoning bylaw that will transform the community of 130,000 into an unexpected hotbed of progressive parking laws.
In addition to joining the quickly growing ranks of cities that have abolished parking minimums for all non-residential land uses — yes, that means no more massive parking lots at new big-box stores, at least not because the city forced developers to build them — the document also imposed aggressive new parking maximums on a range of commercial and residential developments, particularly large apartment buildings. (Accessible parking spaces are still mandated where necessary, of course.) International planning consultant and urbanist Twitter celebrity Brent Toderian, who partnered with the staff on the project, said it was “one of the first medium/smaller cities [he’s] aware of” to do both things at once.