[Keith P.]

This discussion helps illustrate one of the big problems with the planning profession: they always think they know better. If I am one of Wadih Fares' execs, I can tell him with a great degree of accuracy what the demand for parking will be in a new development proposal and how many spots should be built. They have the data, they know the market, they can crunch the numbers and find the sweet spot on the cost/revenue curve. It isn't (and shouldn't) be dictated by some doctrinaire planner, or by a bylaw that hasn't been looked at in 40 years. If people are abandoning car ownership, the market will respond accordingly. Fares won't build parking spots that don't get used. But neither should some social engineer-in-training say "I think cars are bad so you shall build zero parking". That is a good way to end up with a bunch of empty lots that, irony of ironies, eventually become... parking lots.

Leave it to the market and in most cases you will be fine.