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On the one hand, that sucks, on the other...well, what really sucks is that it's probably necessary given the state of public transit and bikeability. (Haven't been to Nashville, so I can't comment on public transportation there.)
Not just Nashville. Any city in the US and undoubtedly other countries. Also not just apartment buildings.
Any city in the US
I don't think that's correct, for example, San Francisco:
On December 11, 2018, the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance (the “Ordinance”) eliminating required parking minimums citywide for all uses.
Some of the newer communities in my city have that... fiddlehead greens design. None of them are walkable in the slightest, they don't even have sidewalks! The houses are built so tight you could scratch your neighbor's ass if the windows were open. And there is absolutely zero street parking. Many of them would require a 10-minute walk to a single bus that comes once every 70 minutes. In some communities there is one bus in the morning and one bus in the evening.
While the fuck cars sentiment is as important as always, planning rules like this have a few goals which aren't all so malicious, including stopping projects decoupling their parking space and selling it for extra, or avoiding 30+ cars all over the sidewalks once everyone is moved in.
Planning codes tend to try and anticipate a community's immediate vicinity needs. The best approach though would be "$x000 per unit to provide and maintain local public transport facilities and routes"
Parking mandates are some of the most egregiously bad laws on our books.
They increase housing costs significantly; land isn't free and cars structures are expensive to build. This is a punitive for those who are trying to make ends meet, or those who are unable to drive. Why would you force a blind man to pay for a two car garage when you're also disallowing them to drive? Doubly so when you don't allow them to sell their unused parking to their neighbors. Oh, and parking minimums significantly reduce our housing inventory. Parking reform alone can boost home building by 40% to 70%. If you haven't noticed yet, we have a bit of a housing crisis going on.
These laws also increase public expenditure because a car is used as transport from A to B. If A is your home, where is B? Pushing parking onto private developers is why in US there are, on average, 6 parking spots per vehicle. That's 5 car spots in your downtown and on your streets that you pay for, be it taxes or increased grocery prices, that sit empty most of the time.
Parking mandates are broken. So broken that it's the #1 campaign item for Strong Towns. We must remove parking minimums or we'll continue to pave over our downtowns and create insolvent cities.
Japan at least seems to direct this at the car owner instead of at the property developer. If you don't have proof of owning or leasing a parking space, you can't register a car.
I just learned this on Not Just Bikes, an awesome YouTube channel!
Imagine suburban trash having to cope with such abuse
This would be literally impossible to implement in the United States.
I don't see why. It wouldn't pass obviously, but structurally there's no problem.
Because the majority of people park their car and their homes where they don't have to pay for a space.
Then they have proof of owning a space. Japan outlaws overnight street parking to prevent cheating the system.
How specifically
You either own a space or you don't. I edited it earlier about overnight street parking being outlawed if that's what you're talking about. I don't know what you mean by parking at their homes. Driveways? That's owning a space. The key point here is if a house/apartment isn't built with a space you need to get one either from someone who isn't using it or a commercial parking structure. If a municipality wanted to dole out street parking in residential areas they could do that too.
It won't work in the U.S. because people still have to drive everywhere anyway. Go over to a friend's house? Get fucked I guess.
I should have said "it won't work in the united states without decades of work undoing car centrism"
Also in its current state there's no good way to actually ensure that an address has a parking space. And what do you do with large families? Or people registering multiple cars at the same address otherwise?
I realize you’re getting downvoted with a lot of comparisons to Japan, and I wanted to lend a real life example.
In Chicago, it’s not uncommon for the parking space to have a separate title not tied to the people who live there, and each vehicle also has to register for a city sticker, which is basically an annual tax. Most parking is street parking, a house would have like 2 spots in the alley, but that might be for a 2 unit building.
It’s not the same as what others are suggesting, but a bit scaled back from what Nashville is requiring.
You're being downvoted but what you're raising is a common argument point. I'll put in some effort here to explain what Japan's system is trying to achieve. Let's start with a simple concept: someone has to build and pay for each parking spot. That is, it's impossible to order a parking spot to have it delivered and maintained to you for free.
If you have a home that you bought, then it was included in the price of the home. That garage and driveway was built on land you paid for and poured by the developer.
If you don't have a driveway, then you'll park on the street. That street was bought and paved by the developer or the city. Each year you'll pay taxes to cover the expense of maintaining that street spot (sweeping, drainage, chip sealing, etc).
These two cases present the same utility: a place to store a car. The difference is in how it's priced: one is internalized and one is externalized. You directly pay to repair your driveway but you don't directly pay to repair your street spot. Your neighbors, no matter if they drive or how many cars they own, pay for your street spot when it needs a repair.
Japan's system is designed such that the general public is not burdened with your choice to drive. Your choice to drive is yours to make, but it's not something that you get to externalize onto others. If you wish to drive, then buy that extra lot of land and put a driveway on it. Heck, make it extra wide so you can park your daily driver and your fancy classic for nice weekend days. Do what you wish with your property.
there’s no good way to actually ensure that an address has a parking space.
Japan enforces their system through registration. A permit is needed to buy and register a car. These permits are issued by officers who will measure your private parking space. A dealer will not sell you a car larger than your space nor will you get tags for your car without sufficient space.
States in the US also have registration but don't require proof-of-parking to register a car. The change to adapt to Japan's system would be to make a proof-of-parking permit a requirement to register a car.
And what do you do with large families? Or people registering multiple cars at the same address otherwise?
Each car gets a permit (it's a sticker on the window). If you have a two car garage, then you can get two permits for each spot in that garage to stick on your two cars.
It's very similar to permitted street parking in the US. Typically you'll get issued X number permits per house that you can affix to your car's bumper. Japan simply takes parking permits a step further by including your car's size and requiring a permit before registration rather than issuing permits post registration.
There's no limit in Japan (that I'm aware of) regarding how many permits a household can get. If you have a four car garage, then you can get four car permits. Or if you only have two garage spots, then you can lease two spots from a neighborhood parking lot to get to your ideal four car permits.
It won’t work in the U.S. because people still have to drive everywhere anyway. Go over to a friend’s house? Get fucked I guess.
Japan has metered general-public parking lots and there are not restrictions preventing a friend parking on your property.
This is not too dissimilar from HOA developments in the US. Most HOAs require owners to put their cars in their garage and disallow cars sitting in the driveway, but are fine with guests temporarily parking in the driveway. They'll also issue a limited number of daily permits for guests to use in a neighborhood lot.
My point is that it would take a wildly disproportionate amount of work that other things (public transportation, bike infrastructure) are almost infinitely easier to do.
Not necessarily. The easiest thing to do is remove or severely limit parking minimum laws, like Washington state's recently passed SB 5184. No infrastructure to build nor required enforcement. This one step removes parking's negative externality, it didn't cost a single dollar, and it can go into effect immediately. Building good public infrastructure is important, but it's not the only thing we can do.
Oh I also agree but I was referring to the parking space registration specifically in my original comment.
Yes, we already do, it's called "housing code inspection". If you register a vehicle, the home would be inspected to register a space for parking that vehicle. You either have it or you don't. If you do, it is registered to that property. If you don't, gotta go find one.
Bigger families would purchase more spaces, since they use more space. Fair is fair.
You just wouldn't allow multiple cars to be registered at the same parking space. You would need to own additional parking for each additional vehicle. Otherwise you don't get to register additional vehicles.
They rent or lease spaces if they don't have enough. It means they're paying for the infrastructure they use. The alternative is the above system that just enforces car centrism. I don't consider it particularly hostile myself. Parking would be dirt cheap in rural areas and very expensive in urban. And inacessable suburban hellholes would be penalized. As it should be.
including stopping projects decoupling their parking space and selling it for extra
They already sell it for extra, those parking spaces are never free and you always pay for them
OP posted another article with more details on it: !https://lemmy.world/post/31486375
From the article:
Construction costs run from $10,000 per parking space in a surface lot to $70,000 per space in an underground garage. That gets baked into what developers must recoup from tenants and buyers, whether they own a car or not. The rules drive up the per-unit cost to build affordable housing (in New York, affordable units near transit are exempt from parking minimums, but the rules still apply elsewhere). And they often require more parking than people actually use.
$70,000 per space in an underground garage.
i was old enough to remember people buying 2 bed rooms apts in third tier cities for this kinda of money.
i think that is a really smart idea as a transition. not having parking minimums within x meters of public transit is a great start because a lot of public transit is shit in usa (no funding, etc).
i hate being forced into owning a car in my neighborhood and wish i didnt need one for basic everyday things, but if there were no parking minimums where i live then it would be a shitshow while waiting for some kind of public transit to never be built.
i agree with this as a starting transition goal : D
Sure. But Nash specifically has a lot of nimby bigots - so while 2 car park spots is great, they won’t vote for a future in which no car spots is acceptable because that would mean an increase in public transit. cf the whole light rail idea that was killed even though a light rail from downtown to east or bellevue would have been fantastic.
Changing rules for parking generally serves only to create local parking shortages (and subsequent emotional discussions) as rhetoric underlying problem is not addresssed. This is a bit chicken-and-egg, but consider what happens if a standard subdivision is built without driveways, parking lots, or garage space. A 2 mile walk to the grocery store doesn’t really work. Instead, the regulations should be for higher density, space for bicycles (and transit), and space for essential amenities like small, local grocery stores and restaurants. ETA - with current conditions creating unplanned multigenerational housing, dad, mom, kid1, kid2, and partners makes for tight parking even with 3 spots.
You know, like they used to build before it was about maximizing the revenue per square mile of land?
An apartment building in a walkable area with a parking garage is more walkable than a regular suburb without the cars.
Are you conflating the idea of banning parking with repealing mandatory parking? These are two very different policies. Developers will still build parking infrastructure when the market demands it and it makes sense for the neighborhood and project. They just won’t be universally required to even when literally no one wants it.
It’s not always the case that builders provide parking. The market demands shareholder profits, and if you don’t build a driveway, that’s more units you can fit on a given plot of land.
This is the trend I’m observing, but I’m certain it is not universal. 
The issue here is that for those things you suggested to exist we would inherently need to reduce parking as part of the change in regulation. Parking spaces are currently taking up the spaces that those amenities would be built, just as you described.
Unfortunately, NIMBY fools hear "reduce parking" and completely turn their brains off to screech about it, without ever considering the rest of the proposal and what it would do to benefit the community, simply because it makes them change their habits and they don't want to.
Like, yes, there will be parking shortages, but that's kinda the point so that people have to utilize alternatives instead.
This raises the price of housing for everyone, since it compels developers and the end user to pay for the added work, physical space, and opportunity cost.