The Importance of Reclaiming Parking Space After the Pandemic

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With just 25% of that curbside parking, we could create 13 new central parks and 500 miles of bus lanes. You can't do it if two thirds of that space is being allocated for people storing their vehicles. Paris has been doing with its streets post pandemic. And they took 180 schools and turned the blocks outside the schools into pretty low touch, low design public laws.

For decades, urban planners have blanketed our cities with the cheap and convenient car storage known as parking. They've swapped sidewalks for strip malls and bulldozed bright, inviting storefronts to make room for dark, urine-scented parking garages. In some downtowns, more land is now devoted to parking than buildings.

Parking profligacy has left us with cities that are polluted and hostile to pedestrians; they're also increasingly unaffordable because legally required parking can drive up the cost of residential construction by 25 percent.

In "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World," journalist Henry Grabar dares to imagine a future in which we knock parking off its pedestal by enacting new laws, adopting new attitudes, and embracing new technologies (like e-bikes and autonomous cars) that make our cities greener, friendlier, safer, and more fun.