An entertaining, enlightening, and utterly original investigation
into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American
life--the humble parking spot
Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a
handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens
over parking spots. But even when we don't resort to violence, we
routinely do ridiculous things for parking, contorting our
professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. Indeed, in
the century since the advent of the car, we have deformed--and in
some cases demolished--our homes and our cities in a Sisyphean quest
for cheap and convenient car storage. As a result, much of the
nation's most valuable real estate is now devoted exclusively to
empty and idle vehicles, even as so many Americans struggle to find
affordable housing. Parking determines the design of new buildings
and the fate of old ones, patterns of traffic and the viability of
transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, the quality of
public space, and even the course of floodwaters. Can this really be
the best use of our finite resources and space? Why have we done this
to the places we love? Is parking really more important than anything
else?
These are the questions Slate staff writer Henry Grabar sets out to
answer, telling a mesmerizing 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 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.