Nearly 15 percent of incorporated land in Los Angeles is dedicated to parking.
The statistic refers to Los Angeles County and is generally reported as about 14 percent, or nearly 15 percent, of its incorporated land area. A 2010 inventory estimated roughly 18.6 million parking spaces occupying more than 200 square miles. That footprint includes on-street spaces, residential parking, commercial lots, and parking structures.
Los Angeles’s car-oriented development helps explain the number. Postwar zoning and minimum-parking requirements often required homes, apartments, offices, and businesses to provide off-street spaces. Over decades, these rules produced an enormous supply of land devoted to storing cars, even though parking can feel scarce in busy neighborhoods.
The figure is often confused with the amount of land devoted to roads. In the cited estimate, parking occupied about 200 square miles, while streets and freeways covered roughly 140 square miles. The statistic applies to Los Angeles County’s incorporated land, not simply the boundaries of the City of Los Angeles, and it measures parking infrastructure rather than only open-air parking lots.