California passed a landmark law in 2022 prohibiting cities from mandating minimum parking requirements near major transit stops. Amy Lee explores how cities and developers have responded.

Show Notes

• Lee, A., Millard-Ball, A., & Manville, M. (2025). State Preemption in Theory and Practice: The Case of Parking Requirements. Urban Affairs Review, 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/10780874251385240
  • Abstract: In U.S. law, states can override actions of local governments that contravene state interests. In practice, preemptions are often more ambiguous nudges, and local responses can vary by interpretation and interests. This paper explores one such case of state preemption: California’s 2022 law that limited local governments’ ability to require automobile parking. The authors find that the law’s complexity and ambiguity created intense debates about interpretations, in all jurisdictions, leading to heterogeneous implementation across cities. Local interests also motivated strategic responses to the law, which the authors present in a threefold taxonomy: cities interested in parking reform used it as a springboard; cities interested in parking reform but facing local resistance used it as a protective shield; recalcitrant cities treated it as an obstacle or subverted the law.
• California AB 2097 (2022): https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2097
• City of Sacramento History of Parking Mandates Memo https://www.cityofsacramento.gov/content/dam/portal/cdd/Planning/parking-revisions/A-Short-History-of-Sacramentos-Parking-Mandates.pdf
• HCD AB 2097 Technical Advisory: https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/policy-and-research/ab-2097-ta.pdf
• UCLA Center for Parking Policy https://its.ucla.edu/programs/parking-center/