Paved paradise : how parking explains the world / Henry Grabar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grabar, Henry, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Automobile parking.

Automobile parking--United States.

Parking facilities.

Parking facilities--United States.

Parking lots.

Parking lots--United States.

Physical Description:

xix, 346 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Penguin Press, 2023.

Summary:

"An entertaining, enlightening, and utterly original investigation into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American life--the humble parking spot. In a beguiling and often absurdly hilarious mix of history, politics, and reportage, Grabar brilliantly surveys the pain points of the nation's parking crisis, from Los Angeles to Disney World to New York, stopping at every major American city in between. He reveals how the pathological compulsion for car storage has exacerbated some of our most acute problems--from housing affordability to the accelerating global climate disaster--ultimately, lighting the way for us to free our cities from parking's cruel yoke"

"An utterly original and entertaining investigation into one of the most unrecognized but influential forces in modern American urban and social life-the humble parking spot You may not yet realize it, but parking has a death grip on life in America. All too often, quite literally: tragically, each year many Americans are killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But even when we don't resort to violence, we routinely do ridiculous things for parking, reorganizing our professional and social lives to find a spot or instead spending a catastrophic sum of money on it. Indeed, over the past century since the advent of the car, almost without noticing it, we have deformed-and in some case quite literally dismantled-not only the buildings in which we live, but our very cities themselves in a futile, downright sisyphean attempt to always have a ready and easy place to store our cars. As a result, some of the nation's most precious and prime real estate has been devoted exclusively to storing empty and idle cars, at a time when more people than ever before are homeless or struggling to find affordable housing. Along the way, rentier businesses that do next to nothing have sprung up across the country. Can this really be the best use of our finite resources and space? Why did we do this to the places we love? Was parking really more important than anything else? These are the questions Slate staff writer Henry Grabar sets out to answer, in doing so telling a mesmerizing and vivid story about the strange and wonderful superorganism that is the modern American city. In a beguiling and often absurdly hilarious mix of history, politics, and reportage, Grabar surveys the hotspots of the nation's parking crisis, from Los Angeles to New York, and every major American city in between. He reveals how this pathological compulsion for car storage has caused and exacerbated some of our most acute problems-from housing affordability to the accelerating global climate disaster-ultimately, lighting t"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

What a mess we made. Housing for cars and housing for people

Fighting over parking spaces

The travails of New York's top parking attendant

Destroying the city in order to save it

Paved paradise

Charging for something everyone expects to be free. How to use parking for money laundering, tax evasion, and theft

A trip to the heart of the commercial parking industry

When Wall Street bought Chicago's parking meters

How to fix the parking problem. The professor of parking starts a cult

Parkitecture

The Shoupistas take City Hall

The market : parking after minimums

How Americans wound up living in the garage

Planting gardens in the gutter

The new world.

Part I: what a mess we made

Housing for cars and housing for people

Part II: in the land of the blind: charging for something everyone expects to be free

How to use parking for money laundering, tax evasion, and theft

Part III: how to fix the parking problem

The professor of parking starts a cult

The shoupistas take city hall

The market: parking after premiums

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-329) and index.

ISBN:

9781984881137

1984881132

OCLC:

1341261409