Most Americans, especially those living outside of major cities, need to drive to get around, and so the need to put one’s car somewhere when we’re not using it — ideally somewhere safe, free, and convenient — is a quiet force that often dominates how we get around. But how parking works (or doesn’t work) is something we rarely stop to consider.
Henry Grabar, a staff writer at Slate, has done a lot of thinking about the issue. In his new book, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, Grabar demonstrates in a fascinating way how parking shapes our lives in the United States, determining the kinds of homes we live in, the communities we build, and how we interact with our built environments. He shows how zoning requirements requiring off-street parking for new construction strangle new development and help fuel the affordable housing crisis. Finally, he offers a series of solutions to make our cities more affordable and livable — and to keep parking from driving us all mad.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why does parking make us so crazy?
That is the million-dollar question. I think there are a few reasons that parking makes people really upset, but perhaps the most obvious is that in almost every place in this country, it is obligatory to have a car, and there is almost nothing that you can do without a car. So to the extent that you are able to hold down a job or go to a restaurant or pick your kids up from school, you have to drive, and parking becomes the link between driving and whatever else you want to do with your life. And so naturally, there’s a great deal of importance placed on having a good parking space.
That’s the first thing. And then the second one is that we have just catastrophically mismanaged the way we provide parking in this country, in a way that actually doesn’t make things better for people who are driving and parking. Parking is not shared, and it’s not properly priced. We have…
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