Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

by Henry Grabar

Despite America’s surplus of free parking and Americans’ related hatred for paying for it, commercial parking is a lucrative business because parkers receive a great deal of help on both sides of the ball. Supply of parking is subsidized because developers are required to build lots and garages but rarely consider them sources of revenue. As a result, parking companies—most of which do not own the properties they operate—aren’t obligated to recoup the capital costs of garage construction ($30,000 to $40,000 a stall, a line item long since dissolved into the developer’s pro forma) and are free to print cash from a lease that requires little in the way of supplies, labor, upkeep, or advertising.