The problem is this: If you try to allow a new dense development near the suburbs and make it affordable by not having minimum parking requirements, people obje

The problem is this: If you try to allow a new dense development near the suburbs and make it affordable by not having minimum parking requirements, people object to it. Not because they want to live there and need somewhere to park their car, but because they don't want local housing to be more affordable or to have a bunch of young people with lower incomes move in and want to send their kids your school district. Developers aren't stupid; the reason they're banned from building housing without parking isn't because they were going to build something nobody wanted to buy. So then that kind of development can't get built, and the bulk of the housing consists of low density suburbs where you need a car, and then everybody drives everywhere. But instead of solving the actual problem, people start trying to come up with ways to make driving worse because they don't like all the cars. Then it's actually the drivers who object, because you're trying to suppress the thing they're forced to do without letting them do the thing that allows them to avoid it.