> Most developers would have no problem building two apartment buildings right next to each other, on every foot of available space, with no parking, selling everything, and then never giving their futures a second thought.
So what's going on with the developer's counterparty in this transaction? I'd be happy to buy a property without parking because I don't drive a car and I find that all the extra asphalt in a neighborhood dedicated to cars actively makes it worse.
I'll grant that removing any parking requirement creates short-term chaos in places where developers under-judge the amount of parking necessary, but I also think that people systematically over-estimate how much parking a place actually needs, and that over-building parking necessarily induces demand for cars because it forces the built environment to become spread out and less walkable. I also think that if the right incentive structures are in place that it's a problem that sorts itself out in fairly short order. In this case if you build a dense housing development with very little parking and no nearby shops then a grocery store on the corner is pretty much risk-free profit since you have a large customer base in close proximity with no competition selling essential goods. If you strip out parking requirements and zoning then you also clear out a lot of the red tape that makes such store difficult or outright illegal to build.
> Zoning exists precisely because all building parties involved in are absolutely mercenary, and yet the city has to deal with the mess in the subsequent decades.
> The entire parking requirement was created because previously developers had overburden street spaces without care.
Zoning is precisely what created communities that have such hopelessly ingrained car dependence and therefore demand huge amounts of dedicated asphalt just for basic transportation.
The "streetcar suburbs" in North America, which were built before modern zoning and before car ownership became an explicit assumption of developmental policy, are still in high demand even with the streetcars ripped out because the lower setback requirements, reduced/nonexistent driveway space, narrower streets, and corner shops make it a more livable and friendly environment.