I know — parking sounds like the most boring thing to build a Monday night around. But I promise you, once you see the numbers, you're going to be as fired up as I am.

We're hosting a meetup tomorrow night to dig into parking reform in Denton — what the city currently requires, what it's actually costing us, and what we can do about it.

Harvest House

331 E Hickory St, Denton, Texas

Here's why this matters:

Right now, Denton's zoning code requires 4 parking spaces for every single-family home. Every restaurant, every little retail shop, every apartment building has to dedicate a set amount of land to car storage — by law — before a single neighbor can walk through the door.

That asphalt costs money. It raises rents. It makes housing more expensive to build. It keeps buildings vacant because a small business owner can't afford to meet the parking requirement for a modest expansion. It means the storefront you wish existed on your block probably can't exist there — not because there isn't demand, but because the city decided it needed more parking first.

Austin just eliminated parking minimums entirely. Dallas voted 14-to-1 this spring to end them downtown and near transit. Bandera, Texas — the self-described Cowboy Capital of the World — scrapped theirs in 2021. A vacant building became a Puerto Rican restaurant almost immediately.

Denton has already taken a small step: the downtown core is largely exempt from parking minimums. We want to talk about what it would take to go further.

We'll be reading from two Strong Towns ebooks — Stuck in Park and Start with the Streets — and I'm sending both links along with this email so you can take a look before tomorrow night. I'll have physical copies at the meetup too, no worries if you didn't get to them.

We'll have a real discussion — questions about Denton's specific code, stories from our own neighborhoods, and five concrete things each of us can do to push for change. We'll be out by about 8:30pm.

Attendees at tomorrow’s meet up with also get early access to our summer Bingo challenge!

You don't need to be a planner or a policy person to show up. You just need to be a neighbor who wants Denton to be a place where people — not parking lots — come first.

I hope to see you there.

With love for this city,

Lauren Penn

Stronger Denton