In 2015, POLITICO Magazine dubbed Evanston “The Suburb That Tried To Kill the Car.” A decade later, a new state law targeting parking minimums has forced the city to confront its development priorities once again.
Beginning in June, Illinois’ People Over Parking Act will eliminate parking minimums for new developments within one-half mile of transit hubs — any area near a train station or major bus station — or one-eighth mile of a transit corridor.
The law, which targets legislation requiring a minimum number of parking spaces in all new developments, applies even in home-rule municipalities like Evanston, where local governments typically retain broad authority to regulate land use.
Due to Evanston’s abundance of public transportation options, the law will affect almost 93% of the city’s land area.
Supporters say the reform will encourage public transit use and housing construction by decreasing the amount of land devoted to underutilized parking spots. Opponents argue it ignores the realities of car ownership and overrides local decision-making in a city already plagued by contentious land use debates.
State Sen. Mike Simmons (D-Chicago), a sponsor of the act and a candidate running to represent Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, summarized the motivation behind the reform.
“It’s going to really help to preserve public transportation and bring it into the future,” Simmons said. “It’s a scalable approach to addressing climate change as well as meeting the dwindling housing supply. And so I’m proud that we got it done.”
But in Evanston, the act’s statewide reach has reignited long-standing debates over who should decide the trajectory of the city’s development. By overriding home rule, the law prevents municipalities from enforcing parking minimums near transit hubs even if local residents support them.
Parking reform advocates, however, claim the overriding was necessary to achieve their goals.
“For the policy to be effective, it needs to be able to do that,” said Steven Vance, a co-lead at Abundant Housing Illinois. “Otherwise, it would not be worth introducing such a policy.”
Some residents have also taken issue with how the People Over Parking Act became law. After similar legislation stalled in the Illinois House of Representatives Rules Committee earlier last year, the parking reform was folded into a larger transit reform bill that had already advanced enough to meet legislative deadlines.
Sixth Ward resident Jeff Smith said this process lacked transparency. Vance, however, said this legislative move was justified.
“It actually makes a lot of sense to do so,” Vance said. “They’re both transit related, and parking mandates are a significant barrier to development.”
Supporters and opponents describe the People Over Parking Act in sharply different terms.
Smith considers the act unreasonable because it’s not reflective of the way that cars are actually used in Evanston.
“Eliminating parking minimums is based in aspiration, to put it benignly, and fantasy, to put it less charitably,” Smith said.
Smith worries that the act will cause developers to build less parking, which he said would trigger congestion of existing street parking.
He decried the act as an example of “lifestyle authoritarianism.”
“Ultimately, you’re trying to change behavior by increasing misery,” Smith said. “We have to solve the problem of why people don’t use mass transit — and just making it more painful to own a car doesn’t seem like the right approach.”
Advocates counter that parking minimums themselves are the problem. David Herriges, policy director at the Parking Reform Network, described parking minimums as a “poorly understood, poorly examined” and “destructive” policy.
Herriges added that there was limited evidence to support the U.S.’s widespread adoption of parking minimums and that they have led to the systemic overbuilding of parking, further inhibiting housing construction.
Many fears surrounding parking reform stem from a misunderstanding of what eliminating minimums actually means, Herriges said. Michael Manville, a professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, emphasized that Illinois’ new law does not outlaw parking construction.
“Ending a mandate is not the same as enacting a ban,” Manville said.
In places where parking requirements have been removed, Manville explained, developers don’t stop building parking entirely as it is still considered an amenity many tenants are willing to pay for. Instead, developers tend to provide less parking than zoning codes previously required or meet demand through alternatives like leased spots in nearby office buildings.
Manville acknowledged that increased demand for street parking might pose an issue, but said that cities can overcome this challenge through more “active curb management.”
The parking debate is not new in Evanston. For decades, the city has strived to reduce car dependency, especially downtown. More recently, parking reform has cropped up in debates surrounding the city’s comprehensive plan.
The initial draft of Envision Evanston 2045 called for the full-scale removal of parking minimums to “allow more housing units and reduce development costs.” Subsequent revisions softened the approach — the newest draft proposes eliminating parking minimums downtown and along some transit-adjacent corridors.
Despite these ambitions, cars largely remain central to daily life in Evanston. According to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, 83.5% of Evanston households between 2019 and 2023 had at least one vehicle. Among residents that commuted to work, 42% drove alone.
Still, Vance and Abundant Housing Illinois hope to see parking minimums wholly eliminated statewide. He said these reforms are all in the service of a single goal.
“What we want to see is just more housing,” Vance said.
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