California passed a landmark law in 2022 prohibiting cities from mandating minimum parking requirements near major transit stops. Amy Lee explores how cities and developers have responded.

Show Notes

• Lee, A., Millard-Ball, A., & Manville, M. (2025). State Preemption in Theory and Practice: The Case of Parking Requirements. Urban Affairs Review, 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/10780874251385240
  • Abstract: In U.S. law, states can override actions of local governments that contravene state interests. In practice, preemptions are often more ambiguous nudges, and local responses can vary by interpretation and interests. This paper explores one such case of state preemption: California’s 2022 law that limited local governments’ ability to require automobile parking. The authors find that the law’s complexity and ambiguity created intense debates about interpretations, in all jurisdictions, leading to heterogeneous implementation across cities. Local interests also motivated strategic responses to the law, which the authors present in a threefold taxonomy: cities interested in parking reform used it as a springboard; cities interested in parking reform but facing local resistance used it as a protective shield; recalcitrant cities treated it as an obstacle or subverted the law.
• California AB 2097 (2022): https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2097
• City of Sacramento History of Parking Mandates Memo https://www.cityofsacramento.gov/content/dam/portal/cdd/Planning/parking-revisions/A-Short-History-of-Sacramentos-Parking-Mandates.pdf
• HCD AB 2097 Technical Advisory: https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/policy-and-research/ab-2097-ta.pdf
• UCLA Center for Parking Policy https://its.ucla.edu/programs/parking-center/

We're doing a three-part book club series on Yoni Appelbaum's 'Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity.' This is episode one, covering chapters 1 through 4.

In the second half of the show, California Attorney General Rob Bonta joins us to talk about connections between the book's themes and his work enforcing housing and immigration law.

Find the Lewis Center at lewis.ucla.edu and chat with the hosts and fellow listeners at our Substack, uclahousingvoice.substack.com.

Show notes:

• Appelbaum, Y. (2025). Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Penguin Random House.
• Stan’s substack, Everyone is Welcome.
• Housing Voice episode 61: Homelessness is a Housing Problem with Gregg Colburn.
• Housing Voice episode 101: Beyond Zoning with John Zeanah and Andre D. Jones (Incentives Series pt. 4).
• 99% Invisible Breakdown of the Power Broker.
• Elmendorf, C. S., Nall, C., & Oklobdzija, S. (2025). The folk economics of housing. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 39(3), 45-66.
• Housing Voice episode 38: The Housing Supply–Migration–Income Relationship with Peter Ganong.
• Books:
  • The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
  • The Economy of Cities, Jane Jacobs
  • The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
  • Golden Gates, Conor Dougherty
  • Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
  • Why Nothing Works, Marc Dunkelman
  • Public Citizens, Paul Sabin
  • Albion’s Seed, David Hackett Fischer
  • The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
  • Polarized by Degrees, Matt Grossman and David Hopkins

We close out the Incentives Series with Lars Doucet offering a primer on land value taxes, the ultimate incentive-aligned housing policy. This is part 11 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.

Show notes:

• Doucet, L. (2025). Land value return is needed, pragmatic, and achievable. Progress and Poverty [Substack].
  Doucet, L. (2025). Enacting Land Value Return in Your Hometown. Progress and Poverty [Substack].
• Doucet, L. (2025). So You Want to Abolish Property Taxes. Progress and Poverty [Substack].
• Doucet, L. (2025). Mass Appraisal For The Masses: The Basics. Progress and Poverty [Substack].