University of California Institute of Transportation Studies

Building a mosque in the US gives rise to opposition. Sometimes, opponents overtly depict Muslims as foreigners threatening American values. In other cases, new mosques are stalled for years or stopped altogether because of concerns about parking: Local officials and residents demand that mosques build more spaces, conduct additional costly parking studies, or attend further public hearings about parking.

Mosques are far from the only type of proposed development to face parking-related opposition. Our study isolated the role of religious prejudice by analyzing the opposition faced by 107 newly constructed American mosques, comparing each one to a nearby church built around the same time. We also examined public records of city council hearings and invited representatives from a sample of the mosques to tell us about

their experiences, whether or how parking came up, and the impacts of parking-related opposition.