Paved Paradise

I've been fortunate enough to spend a bit of time in Venice, which I highly recommend. You know, that place with canals, no cars, people get around by boat. And, yes, they do "get around by boat" but mostly people walk.

The boats aren't, I think, as some people imagine, personal boats, or even (mostly) personal boat taxis. Certainly not gondolas, which are just tourist rides except at a couple of canal crossings. Just big buses that happen to be boats.

"Oh but people who live there have boats, right?" some people ask. But they understand the answer and their misconception instantly. "No, there would be nowhere to park them all." It's a bit easier to see this with boats in canals than with cars, but as much parking as we've built - absurd amounts of parking - the basic problem is the same.

“A parking space is nothing less than the link between driving and life itself.” Grabar, who writes for Slate, does this now and again: elegantly stating a simple truth that undergirds the complex knot of social questions at the center of his book. The dream of the open road assumes a place to put our cars when we arrive at our destination. This is perhaps why so many Americans expect parking to be “convenient, available and free” — in other words, “perfect.” Grabar empathizes with these desires, which is partly what makes “Paved Paradise” so persuasive. Only somebody who understands the emotional power of these fantasies can gently show us how bizarre such entitlement actually is. Decades of fixation on parking have transformed our streets and our cities, none of it for the better.

Grabar’s argument is straightforward: The United States is underhoused and overparked. The economist (and “the country’s foremost parking scholar”) Donald Shoup refers to so-called parking minimums as “dark energy.” Rules that require new housing developments to build a minimum number of parking spaces have pushed up construction prices and generated sprawl. American cities tried to imitate American suburbs and then regretted it. There are now as many as six parking spaces for every car.

Driving doesn't "work" unless there's a good place to park, and the necessary amount of parking is barely compatible with a suburban mall let alone pleasant walkable areas. Cars take up a lot of space! Haven't read the book, but if you're interested!