If I asked you (as I’m about to) to guess how many parking spaces Los Angeles County added on average daily between 1950 and 1980, what would sound like a wacky answer? A dozen? A hundred? Remember, this is every day for thirty years. It was 850. Slate writer Henry Grabar shares that lil’ nugget in the introduction to his jaw-dropping 2023 debut, Paved Paradise which ought to come with a warning label about the insane ripple effects of storing automobiles. His premise is as simple as it is crucial: in this country, there is too much parking, and it should not so often be free. Now, before those of you who crawled city streets this morning and jousted for a precious street spot before relenting to an overpriced garage cry foul, know this: Grabar spent four years reporting and writing the book, logging countless miles in the field, giving the reader a comprehensive study on the history of parking. Note: “By square footage, there is more housing for each car in the United States than there is housing for each person.” Let that ruminate for a minute.
The book unfolds like an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: dive deeply into a dry topic and lace it with sardonic humor (“without a place to park, you can never get out of the car”) and a pinch of forward-looking hope. Just as the fearless host of that great HBO show is known to do, Grabar does a masterful job identifying the issue and its origins in an entertaining way. Herein it’s decentralization, or the flow of business, people, and money to the suburbs. “Why do American cities look, feel, and function the way they do?” he asks. “Much of their form can be traced to misguided midcentury efforts to make it easier to park.” The postwar boom of people and their automobiles intensified traffic, the solution to which appeared to be the construction of more places to park. Wrong. Rather than easing congestion, this worsened it by encouraging citizens to abandon public transportation in favor of using their own smog-belching machines. Buildings were leveled with the valuable land then morphing into lots and garages; when housing was erected, that was only after meeting ever-increasing minimum parking requirements. Perhaps you’ve heard we have a housing shortage, but do you realize that’s largely due to the need to conveniently store vehicles for 95% of their registered lives?
We learn that all this impacts the business world in numerous ways. Parking companies can treat the stalls they neither construct nor own as high margin piggy banks. Private equity has entered the fray by leasing street meters, infamously in Chicago where just over a decade into a 75-year blockheaded government deal Morgan Stanley had already recouped its $1B investment. Prospective shop owners and restauranteurs have the deck stacked against them where upwards of 80% of a commercially zoned lot must be designated for parking. It’s a broken bureaucratic system, yet Grabar loads up the conclusion with a Jersey diner-sized menu of creative ideas. He’s calling for a rethink, citing studies that prove an absurd amount of required parking spaces sit empty an absurd amount of the time. He says not only should we abolish parking minimums, it’s high time for maximums. Read his work to appreciate the full argument. But know he fears at present “we are so deep within the parking crater we cannot see beyond its edges.”
If you have anything to say about this – or book recommendations – kindly post below (rather than emailing me) to spark conversation. Thank you!
Always insightful to read your summaries – thank you!
Thank you, Rob! You’ve been warned – read the book and you’ll never be able to look at cars, traffic, or parking the same way again…