Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

by Henry Grabar

I can understand how this claim is compelling if you cannot picture a world of better parking, where housing is affordable and easy to build, driving is optional, streets are pleasant public spaces for children and the elderly, and a parking spot is readily available when you need it. Most of us cannot, because we are so deep within the parking crater we cannot see beyond its edges. I think again of the woman in Boston who is afraid to go the grocery store. Wasting away, but keeping her parking spot. Parking is access. But it is access of the most superficial sort, one that often papers over deeper inequities we’re unwilling to address. Ample parking at the ball fields feels like a requirement because the roads are too dangerous for parents to let kids ride their bikes. Free parking near campus looks good for students who can’t imagine living close enough to walk. Easy parking in wealthy neighborhoods is a lifeline for workers who will never be allowed to live nearby. And acres of parking downtown feels like a right to commuters and shoppers when the bus comes only once an hour. In each case, parking stands for a primitive kind of access that both overshadows and impedes a more profound and widely held right to the city.