Giving Compass' Take:

• Chris Teale reports that L.A. is working on cutting parking requirements to free up space and reduce congestion in the city. 

• What other policy changes are needed to make this plan succeed? Who will be most impacted by a reduction in parking availability? 

• Learn about congestion pricing models for cities. 

Los Angeles has a reputation of being dominated by cars, and residents and visitors pay the price as its congestion is the worst in the world.

While brainstorming how people can get around the region without cars, city planners are also looking at space like surface parking lots and asking what can be done with such space to alleviate issues such as the housing affordability crisis. It comes with the nature of how mobility is changing, thanks to ride-hailing and autonomous vehicles (AVs), which do not require as much parking.

Housing developments have traditionally been required to provide two parking spaces for every residential unit built on a property, or one space for every 100 square feet of floor space, in rules set down in the late 1940s. But there is a movement afoot to ease those regulations.

At the LA CoMotion Leadership Conference in Los Angeles earlier this month, architecture firm Woods Bagot unveiled its MORE LA initiative, which looks to “transform parking to places." The firm explored what could happen in three districts — downtown, East Los Angeles and Inglewood, CA — if parking requirements were sharply reduced or eliminated, and the surface parking lots could be used for other things.

Read the full article about cutting parking requirements to reduce congestion by Chris Teale at Smartcities Dive.