Singapore’s urban transport policies have long been unusual in vigorously slowing the growth of growth of car ownership. Its parking policies and practices do also have some unusual feature but are also conventional in several important respects. Most Singapore neighbourhoods are park-once-and-walk areas, served by relatively well-managed public parking. Yet parking supply policy still relies heavily on trying to seeks to meet parking demand on-site with each building, using minimum parking requirements. Nevertheless, there are some signs that parking policy may be made more consistent with Singapore’s wider transport and urban development priorities.

To document how parking requirements have spread through Asia, and how they vary among cities, this chapter analyzes the parking policies in 14 large metropolitan areas: Ahmedabad, Bangkok, Beijing, Dhaka, Guangzhou, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Manila, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo.

Two main surprises emerge. First, all the cities have minimum parking requirements and most apply them in rather rigid ways. This is surprising because rigidly-applied parking minimums are usually associated with car dependent cities and seem ill-suited to Asia’s dense and mixed-use urban fabrics where car use is relatively low. Second, although Tokyo’s parking policies include minimum parking requirements, a closer look reveals a uniquely Japanese market-responsive set of parking policies.

The comparisons in this chapter make use of a new typology of parking policy approaches which is presented in the next section. Then the following section illustrates the typology as it applies to common approaches in the western world. This sets the scene for three sections that examine how Asian cities compare by looking at their policies towards: a) off-street on-site parking, b) on-street parking, and c) public parking. The chapter ends by taking stock of the significance of the findings.

Prepared by Paul Barter. The document provides an overview of the different approaches to on-street parking management and provides advice to policy makers dealing with problems arising from unmanaged on-street parking. It addresses common problems that occur from illegal parking and circulating traffic searching for parking and points out approaches to overcome them. This includes information on the appropriate physical design of on-street parking as well as on the institutional basics and adequate tools for fee collection and pricing.

The final book form of my study of "Parking Policy in Asian Cities". Most Asian cities are facing an acute parking crisis as a result of rapid urbanization and motorization, and high urban densities. Parking policy is an important component of a holistic approach to sustainable urban transport across the region. The report provides an international comparative perspective on parking policy in Asian cities, while highlighting the nature of the policy choices available. It is a step in building a knowledge base to address the knowledge gap on parking and the lack of adequate guidance for parking policy in Asia. Available in hard copy or on-line via the ADB page.

This paper contends that the absence of a widely understood typology of parking policy approaches is causing confusion in an important urban policy arena. This is apparent across the parking policy literature, both academic and practical, and across several regions. Previous typologies are reviewed and found to be either incomplete, overly simplistic, inaccurate, or failing to offer insight beyond merely describing the diversity. None enables much insight into the thinking behind each approach and reform thrust. To remedy this gap, a new approach to classifying parking policies is proposed. It is based on making explicit the contrasting mindsets behind different parking reform directions. A review of geographical diversity (both international and within metropolitan areas) is presented. This allows the value of the taxonomy to be evaluated, as well as enabling some refinements. Three main mindsets are posited, with each being defined by answers to two key questions. Each mindset has contrasting assumptions about the nature of parking as an economic good. Further detail in the typology is enabled through a third dimension based on one further question. New clarity provided by the new classification approach should reduce the tendency for parking debates to be confounded by the conflation of distinct reforms, by false dichotomies and by ‘straw man’ portrayals of key alternatives.

This paper addresses and extends upon the recent upsurge of interest in market-oriented reform of parking policy, which has been reinvigorated by the work of Donald Shoup. His market-oriented approach to parking policy is shown to be the more ambitious of two distinct challenges to the conventional supply-focused approach. The other is ‘parking management’. However, off-street parking markets and their post-reform dynamics have been neglected so far in proposals to deregulate the quantity of off-street parking. The paper highlights additional barriers to the emergence of off-street parking markets and several likely problems within them. Rather than suggesting the rejection of market-oriented parking policy, these findings are taken to imply a need for a more vigorous policy effort than has so far been called for. Achieving well-functioning off-street parking markets would require efforts both to actively foster such markets and to regulate to ensure their health. Deregulation would not be enough.

This paper analyses findings on policy towards non-residential, off-street parking supply from a study of large metropolitan areas in East, Southeast and South Asia. The study provides the first international comparative perspective on the issue for a region where parking challenges are widespread and acute. It utilises (and helped to refine) a new typology, which groups parking policy approaches into ‘conventional’, ‘parking management’ and ‘market-oriented’ categories. Several distinct parking policy orientations are identified among the cities studied. Given their characteristics (most have relatively low car-ownership, high-density development and with high usage of public transport) most of these Asian cities might be expected to have off-street parking policies akin to those found in older areas of western cities that have comparable characteristics. Yet, parking policies that are surprisingly conventional and promoting of automobile-dependence prevail in most of the Southeast and South Asian cities studied. It is less surprising that a number of Asian cities (mostly in East Asia) do not have such an auto-centric conventional approach. However, it is a surprise that their parking policy approaches still involve minimum parking requirements and have generally not adopted the most common western alternative to the conventional approach (parking management).