num_pages: 368
description: An entertaining enlightening and utterly original investigation into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American lifethe humble parking spotParking 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 dont 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 deformedand in some cases demolishedour homes and our cities in a Sisyphean quest for cheap and convenient car storage. As a result much of the nations 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 nations 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 problemsfrom housing affordability to the accelerating global climate disasterultimately lighting the way for us to free our cities from parkings cruel yoke.
language: English
title: Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World
publisher: Penguin Press