The Cost of Parking in New Buildings

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David Frum: Parking costs a lot of money to build. He says new buildings built under parking codes that take shape in the latter half of the 20th century must include an enormous amount of parking. This makes it impossible to build vernacular urban housing types like bungalow courts or triple deckers, he says. Frum: If you don't drive, you are paying 10 to 30% of your rent for a parking space that you're never going to use.

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.