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About Michael Manville (Edit profile)

Michael Manville is Assistant Professor of Urban Planning in the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles (mmanvill@ucla.edu).

Market-Priced Parking in Theory and Practice

Michael Manville and Daniel G. Chatman

One of the first lessons of economics is that price controls lead to shortages, and shortages lead to queues. Street parking vividly illustrates this principle. Many cities keep valuable street spaces free or underpriced, and as a result they fill up quickly, creating shortages at busy times. These shortages then create moving queues as drivers circle the block, or “cruise,” searching for spaces. Cruising, in turn, creates congestion and pollution.

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2017-06-02T21:53:48+00:00Categories: ACCESS 49, Fall 2016|Tags: |
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Parking Requirements and Housing Development: Regulation and Reform in Los Angeles

Michael Manville

When cities require off-street parking with all new residential construction, they shift what should be a cost of driving—the cost of parking a car—into the cost of housing. A price drivers should pay at the end of their trips becomes a cost developers must bear at the start of their projects. Faced with these minimum parking requirements, developers may build less housing, and the housing they do build may be more likely to include parking. Parking requirements could therefore reduce both the amount and variety of housing in a city.

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2018-02-12T21:18:45+00:00Categories: ACCESS 44, Spring 2014|Tags: , |
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Parking without Paying

Michael Manville and Jonathan Williams



Anyone walking through downtown Los Angeles might notice many cars parked at expired meters without a ticket. On some streets, every space is occupied, meters are unfed, and enforcement officers walk by without writing tickets. What gives? The drivers have credentials—often disabled placards—that let them park free. Download the PDF.

2018-02-14T22:58:28+00:00Categories: ACCESS 42, Spring 2013|Tags: |
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Introduction: Small Steps

Michael Manville

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized." So said the great architect and planner Daniel Burnham—pioneer of the skyscraper, designer of some of the 19th century's most stunning buildings, and creative and organizational force behind the "White City" of the Chicago World's Fair. Burnham's admonition resonates today. Planners, including transportation planners, have always liked to think big. Who doesn't? People are drawn to outsized ambitions and outsized promises. And it's easy to believe that we face big problems, which in turn require big solutions. How can we make transportation policy, after all, without also tackling land use, housing, and public health?

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2017-05-26T23:05:09+00:00Categories: ACCESS 38, Spring 2011|
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Introduction: ACCESS Moves to LA

Michael Manville

With this issue, ACCESS moves from Berkeley to UCLA. Now that we are in Los Angeles, it is fitting that three of the five essays in this issue deal with freeways or traffic congestion. Freeway congestion is a hallmark of LA—a certainty like death and taxes, a source of frustration and resignation, and a convenient excuse for those of us who tend to be late.

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2017-05-26T23:39:56+00:00Categories: ACCESS 35, Fall 2009|
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For Whom The Road Tolls: The Politics Of Congestion Pricing

David King, Michael Manville, and Donald Shoup

It is almost universally acknowledged among transportation planners that congestion pricing is the best way, and perhaps the only way, to significantly reduce urban traffic congestion. Politically, however, congestion pricing has always been a tough sell. Most drivers don’t want to pay for roads that are currently free, and most elected officials—aware that drivers are voters—don’t support congestion pricing.

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2017-05-30T22:01:49+00:00Categories: ACCESS 31, Fall 2007, ACCESS 50, Special Issue: Transportation Finance|Tags: , |
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People, Parking, And Cities

Michael Manville and Donald Shoup

The pop culture image of Los Angeles is an ocean of malls, cars, and exit ramps; of humorless tract homes and isolated individuals whose only solace is aimless driving on endless freeways. From Joan Didion to the Sierra Club, LA has been held up as a poster child of sprawl. This is an arresting and romantic narrative, but also largely untrue. To the extent that anyone has a definition of sprawl, it usually revolves around the absence of density, and Los Angeles has since the 1980s been the densest urbanized area in the United States. This would make it the least sprawling city in America. Compared to other US cities, LA also does not have inordinately high rates of automobile ownership.

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2017-05-30T22:31:19+00:00Categories: ACCESS 25, Fall 2004|Tags: , |
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