How to Use Parking Space to Make Our Cities Better

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In New York City, there are three million curbside parking spaces and only about 8 to 10,000 of them have been used by restaurants for more outside tables. "There's so much we could do with this space," says author Henry Blodgett. One thing that is perhaps the most obvious thing to do with all this impervious space is to begin to make it greener.

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.