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Many California municipalities mandate a certain number of parking spots per housing unit, and also restrict the height of buildings. These laws act to reduce h

• benj111 7y ago
  I'm aware of that, I don't think that makes owning a car a legal requirement though. Parts of San Francisco predate the car, so I assume density is high enough to support car free living.
  • bobthepanda 7y ago
    There’s no legal requirement to drive, but the barriers that parking requirements put up effectively make driving required, because the alternative is a major PITA. Consider the most basic of trips; you want to go from Walmart to a Target located across the street in a suburban shopping area. Where land values are low (per sq ft), the cheapest way to satisfy parking requirements is to build flat parking lots rather than structured multilevel parking. As a result, a walk across the street requires going from the front door, across a massive parking lot, then crossing a large, high-speed arterial suburban road where a suitable crosswalk may not be close by, and then crossing the Target parking lot to get to the front door. Quite the schlep through an environment that is at best unfriendly to pedestrians and at worst unsafe. In high land value areas this is less of a problem, because the parking lots are in small-footprint garages or located underneath buildings. But most of America does not live in high land value areas, and even the most basic of trips are only practical or safe in a motor vehicle.