Forget the technical debate, parking standards are about the type of cities we want to live in

Steve Melia, University of the West of England

20 March 2015

Steve Melia is a senior lecturer in transport and planning at the University of West of England. His book, Urban transport without the hot air, will be published by MIT Cambridge in May.

When communities secretary Eric Pickles abolished Labour’s (already weakened) national parking standards, he cloaked his announcement in the language of localism: “We’re getting out of the way and it’s up to councils to set the right parking policy for their area.”

But of course, politicians only ‘get out of the way’ when they believe this will move things in their preferred direction. Three years later, the coalition’s intellectual heavyweight...