Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

by Henry Grabar

If this was what a city could do with 8,500 spots, what could it do with 50,000? With 500,000? In a 2021 report, Transportation Alternatives made a pitch for reclaiming 25 percent of the street space New York had allocated to cars. What could we have? Thirteen new Central Parks. Five hundred miles of bus lanes; forty miles of busways; 38 million square feet of community space; better visibility at every intersection; a thousand miles of open streets; 5.4 million additional square feet for restaurants, businesses, and cultural institutions. Three million square feet for pedestrian space, wheelchair access, benches, bus shelters. Eighty feet on every block for loading zones and trash collection. And a block of space for play and outdoor learning outside every single one of the city’s 1,700 public schools.