How Ottawa Abolished Its Parking Mandates

On January 28, 2026, Ottawa City Council voted unanimously to approve a sweeping new zoning bylaw that eliminates parking mandates across all urban and suburban areas of the city. The vote is the culmination of a decade-long reform effort and makes Ottawa one of the largest cities in Canada to scrap the rules that force developers to build a minimum number of parking spaces with every new project.

As someone who lives in Ottawa, this one feels personal. Watching this unfold over the years, from early discussion papers to heated council debates, has been a reminder that parking reform is rarely a single dramatic moment. For big cities like Ottawa, with a total area of 1,077 square miles spanning large urban, suburban, and rural regions, a parking reform campaign can be long and involve groups with wildly divergent perspectives. But here’s how Ottawa got it done.

Parking Rules Nobody Could Explain

Ottawa has had minimum parking requirements baked into its zoning code since 1964. For over sixty years, the city mandated that builders provide a specific number of parking spaces for every new home, apartment, or business. The specific parking ratios were likely borrowed from standards set by the Institute of Transportation Engineers or copied from other municipalities. But in reality, we really have no idea where they came from. When asked about this, city staff were unable to say what, if any, methodology was used to create these specific parking ratio numbers.

In many parts of the city, the requirements hadn’t been updated since they were first introduced. And over time many additional parking ratios were added, often for highly specific land uses, like a mushroom farm, as you can see in the screenshot below. Other hyper-specific/arbitrary ratios include 1 parking space for each kennel for a kennel with 4 or fewer dog runs, and 4 parking spaces per alley, court, ice sheet, gametable, or other game surface, plus 10 per 100 m2 of gross floor area used for dining and assembly for an amusement centre. For a long time, these numbers were treated as immutable facts of urban planning, when in reality they were just made-up rough guesses from a very different era.

The Slow Build: 2015–2021

The conversation started gaining traction around 2015, when the city published a discussion paper reviewing its minimum parking requirements. That same year, a now-famous City of Ottawa YouTube video explaining the hidden costs of parking minimums helped bring the issue into the mainstream.

But policy discussions moved slowly. It wasn’t until the city adopted its new Official Plan in 2021 that the policy groundwork was formally laid. The Official Plan established a framework for guiding growth to the year 2046, and embedded within it were clear signals that the city’s approach to parking needed to change. For example, the new plan emphasized that, to support the shift towards sustainable modes of transportation, eliminating minimum parking requirements should be considered.

The Housing Crisis Takes Centre Stage: 2021–2026

What really shifted gears around this time was the housing market itself. In the wake of the pandemic, housing prices across Canada surged as demand dynamics adjusted to a working from home reality, and Ottawa was no exception. The sudden increase in housing prices put an even larger spotlight on the housing crisis, bringing the issue to the forefront of city hall. Suddenly, every tool that could help bring down the cost of building new homes was on the table, and parking mandates, which added tens of thousands of dollars per unit, became an obvious target. That political urgency created space for advocacy groups to make a very strong case for reform.

In 2021, a volunteer advocacy group called Make Housing Affordable was founded. And in 2023 they launched their Housing Action Plan, a platform built around “Six Big Moves” to tackle Ottawa’s housing crisis, one of which was to end mandatory parking minimums. The group’s framing was blunt: “Our city doesn’t have a parking crisis—we have a housing crisis.” Make Housing Affordable proved especially impactful when it came to organizing delegations in front of city hall standing committees. Founder Dean Tester, for example, testified before the Finance and Corporate Services Committee, emphasizing how abolishing parking mandates was essential to making housing more affordable. That kind of consistent, volunteer-driven presence at committee meetings helped keep the issue front of mind for councillors.

By 2024, the pressure had intensified. The Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association, led by executive director Jason Burggraaf, was calling for the outright elimination of parking minimums. Burggraaf pointed out that underground parking spaces cost $80,000 to $100,000 each to build, costs that get passed directly to homebuyers and renters. The Federation of Citizens’ Associations of Ottawa, representing 75 neighbourhood groups, echoed the concern.

Meanwhile, advocacy organizations like Ecology Ottawa and Walkable Ottawa supported pushing for denser, more walkable neighbourhoods. They championed the idea that fewer mandatory parking requirements mean more room for trees, green space, and affordable housing.

Expert Voices and Political Will

In December 2021, Toronto city council voted to fully abolish its parking mandates. This had the obvious effect of boosting confidence in parking reform among other cities in Ontario, including Ottawa. The media picked up on this, and planning staff were regularly quoted in articles on the topic. For example, Rachel Weinberger, director of research strategy at the Regional Plan Association in New York, and PRN advisory board member, was quoted in a CBC article exploring what removing parking mandates would mean for Ottawa. She emphasized that research showed that parking mandates can add 15 to 20 percent to construction costs, and that cities which had already removed them, like Buffalo, Edmonton, and Calgary, saw a boost to their housing supply.

During this time, many Ottawa city councillors also found the confidence to publicly support the removal of parking mandates city-wide. Councillor Jeff Leiper, chair of the planning and housing committee, became one of parking reform’s most vocal champions on council. In 2024, in a thoughtful post on his website he explained why he supports abolishing parking mandates, and more broadly why moving away from car-centric planning model is beneficial for everyone:

When city staff released the first draft of the new zoning bylaw in 2024, the elimination of parking minimums was front and centre. Accompanying the draft was a thorough staff report reviewing minimum parking ratios, which made the case for moving to what staff called a “choice-based approach”, emphasizing the importance of letting property owners decide how much parking to provide rather than mandating it through zoning. The report drew on research from cities around the world and even included our PRN Reform Map to illustrate the growing wave of cities that had already taken this step. Seeing our map cited in an official city planning document was a cool moment; it happens much more often than we think! And sometimes we aren’t even aware that it occurred.

A second draft of the bylaw followed in 2025, refined through extensive public consultation.

What the New Zoning Bylaw Actually Does

The approved zoning bylaw eliminates minimum parking requirements for new residential and commercial developments across Ottawa’s urban and suburban zones. Here are the key details:

• No minimum parking mandates for new developments in all urban and suburban areas
• Visitor parking is still required in major developments throughout the city
• Residential rural wards retain 1 minimum parking space per dwelling unit
• EV-ready standards apply to new parking spaces that are built

The parking changes are part of a broader package that also allows four housing units on every serviced residential lot, raises height limits to three storeys across the city, and expands permissions for mixed-use development and home-based businesses.

The new zoning bylaw is expected to take effect at a council meeting in mid-March 2026.

A Unanimous Vote & a Housing Mandate

Perhaps the most striking thing about the final vote was that it was unanimous. In a city that regularly sees divisive debates over housing developments, every member of council voted in favour.

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe called the bylaw “ambitious” and said it would “shape the future of our city in a very positive way.” Councillor Ariel Troster also spoke to the significance of eliminating parking mandates as part of the city’s broader commitment to building more affordable, livable neighbourhoods. She also joked that she’s looking forward to no longer having to “sit through a Housing & Planning meeting ever again where people come and say ‘I know we need more housing, but just not here, not on my street.'” You can watch the video below:

Not everyone was fully comfortable with removing parking mandates. Councillor Matt Luloff warned that eliminating parking minimums might work near LRT stations but questioned its viability in car-dependent suburbs. Councillor Clarke Kelly raised concerns about on-street parking overflow in areas like Kanata. But in the end, the political mandate was clear: Ottawa had already committed to building 151,000 new homes by 2031, and parking mandates only stood in the way of that goal.

What Comes Next For Ottawa and Beyond

Removing parking mandates is a critical milestone, but it’s far from being the finish line. Implementation matters. Ottawa will need to continue building public understanding of why these changes were made, invest in better public transit reliability, and develop a more comprehensive approach to on-street parking management, from expanding the residential parking permit system to prioritizing on-street access for car-sharing companies to implementing parking benefit districts.

At least now, developers will start making their own decisions about how much parking to actually build, guided by market demand rather than arbitrary ratios. And residents will slowly see that the predicted parking chaos trumpeted by opponents of parking reform doesn’t quite materialize, just as it didn’t in Edmonton, Austin, Toronto, and Buffalo, as shown by the increasing amount of red dots crowding out our Reform Map below:

This momentum is what is really encouraging to see. Across North America, parking reform is accelerating. In Canada, many major cities have already abolished their mandates. In the United States, we are seeing significant movement at the state level, with Washington State and Montana passing groundbreaking statewide legislation, with many more bills in motion for the 2026 legislative sessions.

Abolishing parking mandates in a city as large and varied as Ottawa required more than a decade of policy work, advocacy campaigns, expert testimony, and political courage. None of it happened overnight. But Ottawa’s story shows that when the evidence is clear, and the political will catches up, even the most entrenched rules can change. And every city that takes this step makes the next one a little less daunting.