America's great zoning revolution, mapped and measured

Modern flex-industrial building with surface parking lot.

More than 100 U.S. cities have fully abolished parking minimums, at least 15 states have preempted local density restrictions, and the most sweeping FAR increases since the postwar era are reshaping development pipelines in metros from New York to San Diego. What began as a fringe urbanist cause in Buffalo in 2017 has become the dominant thread in American housing policy—a bipartisan, coast-to-coast dismantling of the regulatory architecture that, for seven decades, made it illegal to build anything other than a detached single-family home on roughly three-quarters of the nation's residential land. The Parking Reform Network now tracks more than 3,700 cities across 22 countries that have enacted some form of parking reform. In the United States alone, the movement has shifted from a handful of progressive experiments to a structural realignment of how cities regulate the built environment. This tracker compiles the most granular, current data available on three interlocking reform vectors—parking minimum eliminations, FAR cap increases, and form-based code adoptions—from 2020 through early 2026.

The parking minimum falls: from Buffalo to 100+ cities in eight years

Buffalo eliminated all parking minimums citywide in 2017 as part of its Green Code overhaul, becoming the first major U.S. city to do so. A Sightline Institute analysis later found that 68% of all new homes built in Buffalo after 2017 used parking ratios that would have been illegal under the prior code, enabling a wave of historic building conversions that had been economically impossible when each unit needed a dedicated parking berth.

Minneapolis followed in 2021, voting unanimously to eliminate all parking mandates citywide. The results have been striking. While national rents climbed 22% from 2019 to 2024, Minneapolis rents actually declined 4% over the same period, according to NBC News data—a divergence that planning commissioner Chris Meyer attributes partly to supply gains unlocked by parking and zoning reforms. Developers reported delivering new apartments at roughly 20% lower cost.

Austin became the largest U.S. city to fully eliminate parking minimums when its council voted 8-2 on November 2, 2023. Council Member Zohaib "Zo" Qadri, who authored the measure, cited Transportation and Public Works Department data showing that parking mandates added $5,000 to $60,000 per space to development costs, translating to as much as $200 per month in additional rent. Portland completed its own citywide elimination on June 30, 2023, describing it as "minor code cleanup" after decades of incremental reform. Denver's council approved its citywide repeal 9-3 on August 5, 2025, with a University of Denver study projecting the reform would boost multifamily construction by 12.5%, or roughly 460 additional homes per year. A review of 105 recent Denver housing projects in areas without minimums found developers provided 17% fewer parking spaces, saving nearly $146 million in aggregate.

New York City's "City of Yes for Housing Opportunity," approved December 5, 2024, created the largest parking mandate-free district in America by population. The three-zone system fully eliminated mandates across Manhattan's core and Long Island City (2.6 million residents), significantly reduced them in transit-served portions of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and maintained them in outer areas with limited transit access.  DCP Director Dan Garodnick estimated the average underground parking space in New York costs $67,500; developers put the figure closer to $100,000. A Regional Plan Association analysis found that removing parking mandates for affordable housing had already produced 36% more affordable units annually in the transit zone between 2016 and 2020.

The list of other cities that have fully eliminated minimums since 2020 now includes Raleigh (March 2022, 7-1 vote), Anchorage (November 2022, unanimous 12-0), San Jose (December 2022), Richmond (April 2023), Durham (2024), Chicago (July 2025, covering 74% of the city), and Boulder (July 2025). Nationally, structured parking costs $30,000 to $40,000 per above-grade space and $60,000 to $120,000 per underground space. A landmark December 2024 ECOnorthwest/Sightline Institute study modeled Colorado's housing market and concluded that parking reform alone could boost homebuilding by 40 to 70%—two to three times more effective than ADU legalization or transit-oriented development policies considered independently.

FAR caps shatter in New York, San Diego, and along every transit corridor

Floor Area Ratio reform has been quieter than parking reform but arguably more consequential for long-term housing capacity. New York's City of Yes package eliminated the state-imposed 12.0 residential FAR cap that had constrained development since 1961. The state legislature amended the Multiple Dwelling Law to authorize two new high-density zoning districts: R11 (maximum FAR of 15.0) and R12 (maximum FAR of 18.0). The package also introduced a Universal Affordability Preference granting a 20% FAR bonus citywide in medium- and high-density districts for projects that include permanently affordable units. An AECOM analysis estimated the changes collectively enable an additional 295 million square feet of development capacity, translating to a projected 80,000 new housing units over 15 years, backed by $5 billion in city and state investment. In the program's first year, over 100 applications were filed under the affordability preference alone, generating an expected 5,400 homes including 900 affordable units. Landmark air rights transfers surged to five in twelve months—compared with just 15 in the prior 50 years.

San Diego's Complete Communities Housing Solutions program, adopted in late 2020, went further. Tier 1 downtown parcels received unlimited FAR for residential development. Tier 2 areas near UC San Diego were set at 8.0 FAR; transit priority areas at 6.5 or 4.0 depending on mobility zone. In February 2023, the city expanded qualifying areas by redefining them from a half-mile to a one-mile walking distance from transit, adding 5,224 acres of developable land. Mayor Todd Gloria's January 2024 executive order mandated 30-day review timelines for qualifying projects, down from as long as 12 months.

Los Angeles's Transit Oriented Communities program, launched in 2017 and codified through the Citywide Housing Incentive Program in early 2025, allows up to 80% density bonuses and 55% FAR increases at the highest tier. By late 2024, more than 110 TOC projects were in development encompassing over 11,000 units. Washington State's HB 1491, effective July 2025, now requires cities to allow buildings up to 3.5 FAR within a quarter-mile of light rail stations— mandating density by state law rather than requesting it.

Form-based codes replace use-based zoning in hundreds of jurisdictions

The Form-Based Codes Institute— now rebranded as the Center for Zoning Solutions at Smart Growth America—has documented over 400 form-based codes prepared for U.S. communities, with at least 252 formally adopted as of its last comprehensive count in 2012. That figure has grown substantially; the organization now accepts over 100 code submissions annually for the Driehaus Award alone.

Miami 21 and Denver's 2010 Zoning Code remain the only two major U.S. cities with form-based codes applied to every parcel citywide. But the 2020–2026 period has seen significant adoption and expansion. South Bend, Indiana won the 2021 Driehaus Award for its citywide form-based code, which took effect in January 2020, eliminated off-street parking requirements, and launched the "Build South Bend" initiative that became a national model for incremental infill development. Hartford, Connecticut won the 2020 award for a citywide code written from scratch for a post-industrial legacy city. Cincinnati, which adopted its transect-based code unanimously in 2013, continued expanding neighborhood regulating plans through 2024, when Mayor Aftab Pureval's "Connected Communities" initiative designated 39 business districts and seven major transit corridors for form-based redevelopment with reduced parking minimums of just 0.5 spaces per unit in buildings of 10 or more. Gainesville, Florida, while not adopting a traditional form-based code, consolidated four single-family zones into one unified district in July 2024, setting a minimum lot size of 3,500 square feet and allowing up to 12 units per acre across formerly single-family zones.

Fifteen states and counting have preempted local exclusionary zoning

The state preemption wave represents the most structurally significant shift. Oregon's HB 2001, signed in 2019 by Governor Kate Brown, banned single-family-only zoning in cities over 25,000 and required duplexes in all cities over 10,000. All 56 affected jurisdictions complied by the end of 2022. Portland's resulting Residential Infill Project produced 1,400 middle housing units by 2024, each selling for $200,000 to $300,000 less than typical single-family homes in the same neighborhoods.

California's multi-bill approach has been the most prolific. ADU permits surged from 1,269 in 2016 to approximately 23,000 units built in 2023—a 15,000% increase. ADUs now represent nearly one in five housing units produced in the state; Los Angeles alone has permitted over 26,800. SB 9, the 2021 duplex bill, has seen slower uptake—only 75 split-lot applications approved across 16 major cities in its first two years— partly because a Los Angeles County Superior Court ruling in April 2024 found it unconstitutional as applied to charter cities, a decision now under appeal. California's AB 2097, effective January 2023, eliminated parking minimums within a half-mile of major transit stops statewide.

Montana's 2023 bipartisan package— signed by Republican Governor Greg Gianforte— legalized duplexes in cities over 5,000 (SB 323), required cities to allow ADUs (SB 528), mandated multifamily housing in commercial zones for cities over 7,000 (SB 245), and restructured land use planning around 20-year housing production targets (SB 382). The Montana Zoning Atlas, created by the Frontier Institute, had revealed that Missoula's zoning was virtually identical to Los Angeles's—roughly 75% single-family-only— galvanizing bipartisan support in a state where the median home price had surged 90% from 2018 to 2023.

Washington's HB 1110, signed by Governor Jay Inslee in April 2023, requires fourplexes in cities over 75,000 and sixplexes near major transit. Its companion parking reform bill, SB 5184, signed in May 2025, caps parking mandates at 0.5 spaces per dwelling unit for multifamily housing in cities over 50,000— covering 83% of the state's population. Florida's Live Local Act, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in March 2023 with $711 million in funding, requires local governments to allow multifamily housing in any commercial, industrial, or mixed-use zone by administrative approval, with no public hearings required. Over 180 Live Local projects entered the pipeline, though only six had broken ground by early 2025, and several municipalities have filed legal challenges. Arizona's 2024 package requires cities over 75,000 to allow duplexes through fourplexes within one mile of central business districts and mandates ADU allowances on all single-family lots. Connecticut's HB 8002, signed in 2025, eliminated parking minimums for housing developments under 16 units and created an incentive structure for missing middle housing. Even Texas passed SB 840 in 2025, capping parking requirements at one space per unit for multifamily projects on commercial-zoned land.

What the National Zoning Atlas reveals about where we started

The scale of the problem these reforms address comes into focus through the National Zoning Atlas, which is digitizing codes across more than 33,000 U.S. jurisdictions. The data is sobering. Approximately 75% of residential land in American cities remains zoned exclusively for single-family housing. In Connecticut, 91% of land allows single-family as of right while just 2% permits four-or-more-family housing. Massachusetts is nearly identical: 96% of residential land allows single-family by right, 4% allows multifamily. Colorado's 2025 report found 59% of residential land prohibits multifamily entirely, and 85% of residential land carries parking mandates— the most common requirement being two spaces per unit. In California, UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute found 95.8% of total residential land zoned exclusively for single-family homes, with 14 municipalities at 100%.

McKinsey estimates the United States faces a deficit of roughly 5 million housing units, a gap whose closure would require $2.7 trillion in investment. Nobel laureate Edward Prescott and colleagues have estimated that rolling back land use regulations to 1980 levels could boost U.S. GDP by up to $1.8 trillion, or 9%. The reforms tracked here represent the first sustained attempt to close that gap through deregulation rather than subsidy—a rare policy domain where both parties have found common ground. Whether the pace is fast enough to match the depth of the crisis remains the central question.

Conclusion: a structural shift, not a trend

The zoning reform movement between 2020 and 2026 has crossed a threshold from isolated experiments to systemic change. Three patterns stand out from the data. First, parking reform is the gateway drug: cities that eliminate parking minimums almost invariably move to broader upzoning within two to four years, as the political coalition and evidentiary base for reform expand. Second, state preemption is accelerating faster than local reform, with at least 15 states now intervening in local land use—a reversal of a century of deference to municipal control. Third, the economic evidence is hardening: Denver's $146 million in savings across 105 projects, Minneapolis's 4% rent decline against a 22% national increase, and Sightline's modeled 40–70% homebuilding boost from parking reform alone are converting what was once ideological argument into fiscal fact. The question is no longer whether American zoning will change, but whether it will change fast enough to matter.

Sources:

• National Zoning Atlas

• Parking Reform Network

• Form-Based Codes Institute / Smart Growth

• America American Planning Association (APA)

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

• New York City Department of City Planning

• Innowave data