For a century, a concrete blight has been spreading through American cities. And now, for the first time, new data is allowing us to measure its toll.
“At the centre of our biggest cities, some of the most valuable public land on earth has been exclusively reserved for the free storage of private cars,” writes Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. There are more square feet of housing in the US for each car, he notes, than there are for each human.
Grabar lists some violent symptoms of the American car disease — battles over coveted parking spots that turn deadly “a few dozen times a year”. But the essential problem is not that parking in the US is too hard — it’s that it’s too easy. Abundant parking has hollowed out urban life.