Thousands of off-street car parking spaces are left vacant in the city, but a key review of Victoria's planning rules will not remove a statewide requirement to provide one car park for every one- to two-bedroom dwelling.

This is despite research warning of an off-street parking glut in Melbourne's city centre, with as many as 13,000 off-street residential car parking spaces believed to be empty.

Up to 41 per cent of private spaces in West Melbourne are vacant.

For the first time, The Age has created a map that highlights the locations of car parking vacancies in the city, using parking data gathered in 2015 and 2016 by Melbourne City Council, and car registration data gathered for the 2016 Census.

It reveals that over 4000 car parks are empty in Southbank, nearly 3000 parks are empty in the CBD, and about 2500 parks are vacant in the Docklands.