We’re counting down the days to Climate Week 2026 in New York City, where PRN has been hard at work alongside some of our closest partners putting together a compelling series of ten events to shine a spotlight on The Urban Climate Solution.
Click that link to learn about the full track, which runs from September 21-25, get location and time details for individual sessions, and register to attend them. We are beyond excited to bring a message to Climate Week in a big way that we think has gone underappreciated in the past.
That message is simple: urban land use reform is among the simplest, least expensive, highest-returning forms of climate action we can take. By changing the rules and practices that govern how our communities are built and how we get around them, we can make lower-carbon choices the easiest choices in everyday life.
Yet land-use reforms often get short shrift in the public discourse about climate change, amid a much stronger focus on electrification and clean energy technology. We’re hoping to bring some needed balance.
We need all of the above, of course. But when transportation is the largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (about 28%), and more than half of that comes from light-duty personal cars and trucks, we simply can’t ignore the question of why our cities require us to drive those vehicles to meet so many everyday needs.
Where Did the Corner Store Go?
Take the corner store. It’s an icon of American community life, an emblem of our entrepreneurial national culture, omnipresent in nostalgic visions of the country (think Norman Rockwell paintings or Hallmark Christmas movies)… and it’s illegal in most of our modern-day neighborhoods.
On Tuesday, September 22nd, we’re unpacking why this is, and what it will take to bring jobs and commerce closer to where people live, decreasing our everyday reliance on motor vehicles.
Why the Corner Has No Store: The Rules That Make Us Drive
Tuesday, September 22nd | 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Venue: 49 Elizabeth St. 6th Fl. , New York, NY
Speakers:
- Abigail Doerr (Moderator), Managing Director, Metropolitan Abundance Project
- Tony Jordan, President, Parking Reform Network
- Zoe Tishaev, City Policy Coordinator, Cities Work, Institute for Justice
- Sam Hooper, Legislative Counsel, Sam Hooper Legislative Affairs
It’s not just about zoning. But it starts there. Urban planning ideas in vogue in the mid-20th century prioritized the strict separation of land uses to manage burgeoning car traffic and create orderly neighborhoods. But over time, that has come to mean that a lengthy car trip is required to obtain something as simple as a gallon of milk, a cup of coffee, or hardware for a household repair.
Parking mandates make it prohibitively difficult and expensive to fit a small, neighborhood serving business onto a modest lot. Parking lots are often required to be multiple times the size of the building they serve, even when many of the customers will live within walking distance. And compared to residential parking mandates, commercial mandates are even more arbitrary and nonsensical, ultimately prohibiting that donut shop, hair salon, or day care from opening up near you based on some planner’s guesswork 40 years ago, rather than the business’s actual parking needs.
We need to fix zoning to allow small walk-up businesses in the places where people actually live. We also need to look at the thicket of permitting and licensing rules, messy and duplicative processes, and lengthy bureaucratic delays that stymie small-scale entrepreneurs in practice.
And we need to reduce the financial bar to entry that keeps folks from developing and filling these spaces. Too often, a modern-day corner store is unprofitable, even where it isn’t outright illegal. And the reason isn’t that there’s not demand for them: most Americans will tell you they’d love to patronize a shop in walking distance of their home.
Rather, it’s the nuts and bolts of what it takes to retrofit an old building or construct a new one—all while complying with building codes that are typically optimized for much larger developments while proving overly complex and costly for small ones. If we’re going to re-introduce neighborhood commerce, we need to make it possible at the smallest scales, like an Accessory Commercial Unit: a business operated adjoining a residential home, either in a separate structure or a dedicated, attached space.
The benefits of untangling this knot extend far beyond climate action. Ultimately, it’s about strengthening our communities, creating opportunities for local creators and entrepreneurs, keeping wealth at home where it will recirculate in the local economy, and shoring up the local government revenues that pay for essential services.
It’s economic development that doesn’t require a mega tax subsidy or handout. And it just might help cool a warming planet, too. Learn more about our upcoming event during NYC Climate Week
