Workplace Parking Provision and Built Environments: Improving Context-Specific Parking Standards Towards Sustainable Transport

Both academics and practitioners concur that parking restraints should be actively introduced in urban centers and job-intensive areas, to prevent overdependence on automobiles. Many Chinese metropolises have reduced the level of parking minimums for non-residential premises in central and transit-rich areas. However, there is a lack of research examining the effectiveness of these policies. Taking Shenzhen as a case study, this paper compares the parking supply with the parking minimums at each policy period, and analyzes the spatial characteristics of parking provision for office use. The descriptive analysis found that the effects of minimum parking requirements (MPRs) on parking provision vary by floor area ratio (FAR), operation period, and transit accessibility. By conducting a geographical weighted regression (GWR) model, this paper further examines the spatially varying effects of the built environment on parking provision. The modeling results conclude that the significance and strength of the effects of built environments on parking provision vary across space. (1) The total parking quantity increases with the growth of the FAR, and this increasing effect is larger in suburban areas than in the city proper. (2) Lot size has a positive relationship with parking provision, and the effects are stronger in areas with higher parking demand. (3) Transit accessibility has inconsistent associations with parking provision at different locations, in terms of the direction and strength of the influence. These results provide relevant insights into the development of context-specific parking policies in the high-density contexts of China’s large cities