A new simulation tool used in a Denver study suggested that eliminating minimum parking requirements in the Mile High City would increase housing construction by about 12.5 percent, translating to roughly 460 additional homes annually.
Stefan Chavez-Norgaard, co-author of the study and a teaching assistant professor at the University of Denver, said the study was published around the time the Denver City Council was deciding whether to remove minimum parking requirements.
“We do think it, hopefully, elevated the debate so that it was a data-driven conversation and that we were talking about specific numbers of units and increases over time based on different economic assumptions,” Chavez-Norgaard said.
Alexandra Foster, communications program manager for Denver Community Planning and Development, said that as of August, there are no longer minimum requirements dictating the “fewest number of off-street vehicle parking spaces a new or expanded development must provide depending on its use.”
“The development community has responded positively because they can now determine for themselves the number of parking spaces to provide based on a development’s specific needs and are no longer required to navigate complex parking regulations with many exceptions,” Foster said.
How the study was conducted
Chavez-Norgaard explained that he and a team at DU, including law professor Susan Daggett, partnered with Terner Labs, a nonprofit affiliated with the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation, to utilize their data simulator and examine how removing parking minimums would affect market-rate multifamily housing developments. Chavez-Norgaard added that the term "multifamily" includes townhouses, condos, duplexes, triplexes and apartments.
He said the simulator integrates a wide range of variables — such as land values, interest rates, building material costs, and policies like inclusionary housing, parking minimums, and more — to model housing production outcomes.
The Colorado team adapted the simulator for Denver by geocoding parcel-level spatial data and incorporating local zoning and regulations.
“It’s really about whether or not a particular policy change is likely to affect the production of housing,” Daggett said. “That's the question you're ultimately trying to get at using this tool.”
She said data scientists ran simulations of 75 versions of the parking requirement case and examined various economic scenarios, ranging from healthy to low performing.
“We wanted to do the [parking] to see how the tool worked and to see what we could learn from the tool,” Daggett said. “We also wanted to do something that felt timely and relevant and that might mean something to somebody who was in a policymaking position.”
Chavez-Norgaard said the study suggests the simulator can be applied to other cities with “a whole array of public policies.”
Using the simulator in other ways
Chavez-Norgaard said the team plans to use the simulator to focus on other areas, including Fort Collins, Aurora and Grand Junction.
“We want to sort of understand a diversity of places with different growth dynamics,” he said.
These regions are experiencing rapid growth and operate under very different regulatory environments, especially regarding permitting, according to Chavez-Norgaard. Permitting timelines emerged as a key policy area during the initial research on parking minimums.
“We could look at a variety of other variables, including density bonuses, transit-oriented communities — which is a statewide statute around building housing near transit,” he said. “This is something that members of city councils, members of state legislatures, or mayors’ offices around the country could use to try to get a rough sense of what the result of specific public policies might be.”
Impact of no more parking minimums in Denver
Daggett said the study demonstrates that parking will be built to meet demand, rather than in excess.
“If excess parking is not built, then it frees up land and it frees up capital to build more units,” she said.
Foster said Denver has a variety of programs intended to increase the housing supply, from affordable housing programs administered by the Department of Housing Stability to regulatory streamlining and code changes that expand the types of housing allowed in the city's neighborhoods.
She added that people have responded well to the change.
“Those we have talked to have said that parking requirements help create a car-dependent city, which is unsustainable, and that eliminating requirements is an opportunity to support alternative modes of transportation and create walkable neighborhoods,” Foster said.
She added that some residents are concerned about future developments not having enough parking.
“However, even before these requirements were removed, most developments provided more parking than the minimum required, so the actual amount of parking that new developments provide is unlikely to change quickly,” she said.
Benefits to removing parking minimums
From a land use perspective, Daggett said, removing parking requirements offers significant collateral benefits, especially in terms of property flexibility. Without mandated parking minimums, developers and homeowners gain more freedom to use their land creatively and efficiently.
She said this change is particularly impactful in historic neighborhoods and older downtown buildings, where redevelopment efforts have often been stalled due to the inability to meet parking requirements.
Overall, the shift away from mandatory parking is seen as a win for urban land use, enabling more thoughtful and productive development.
Eliminating these mandates opens up possibilities for better land use, allowing for parks, trees, additional housing, or any other more beneficial use than underutilized asphalt lots, Daggett said.