DIVERTING A LOT OF LAND FROM ITS MOST PRODUCTIVE USE?

As a follow-on to our mini-dissertation on urban land use, I commend Streetsblog's American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage.  "Much of the parking in the central districts of these cities consists — the places with the best access to jobs — consists of garages, the most expensive type of parking to build. In Seattle, one-third of the city’s parking supply is located in downtown garages."  Those parking spaces are the consequence of zoning codes and worst-case parking minimum capacity standards, which is to say, constraints on the reallocation of land to its most productive use.  Remove the constraints, watch the reallocation to housing and office towers commence.