A new study has found that proposals for mosques face more pushback from their neighbors over parking requirements than churches.
The study, published in The Journal of the American Planning Association, found that mosques were 16-18% more likely to experience opposition than newly proposed Christian churches.
Study co-author Adam Millard-Ball, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, says concerns over parking are often made in good faith.
“People really are concerned about the impacts on parking availability,” he said. “ But we found that sometimes parking is just a smokescreen — it’s a cover for people to hide their prejudice against Muslims.”
Co-author Mark Massoud, a law and policy professor at UC Santa Cruz, says legitimate fears can be weaponized at planning commission hearings and city council meetings.
“Parking and religion are visceral emotional topics in America, especially here in California,” he said. “Many people feel like the only way to get around is by driving.”
Massoud says the mosques in his study did provide adequate parking, but were still asked to jump through extra hoops. In some cases, like for the Islamic Society of Santa Barbara, approval was delayed for more than a decade.
Millard-Ball says that local government’s discretion over permitting is part of the problem.
“It sounds reasonable for residents to be able to weigh in on their views on a new development project. But in practice, this is an opportunity for people to make prejudicial comments,” he said.
According to Millard-Ball, zoning codes should be applied to all projects consistently and minimum parking requirements should be eliminated entirely.
For Massoud, these questions boil down to whether we want a community where people are able to gather together for worship and important events.
“If there is a little more traffic, maybe that's not a problem,” Massoud said. “We can actually handle that, because we made a commitment to have communities where things happen.”
