Livability Series: How Our Cities Became Parking Lots
A discussion on the effect of parking on housing supply and urban sprawl, and how our neighborhoods look and feel.
There are likely between 1 and 2 billion parking spaces in this country, enough to pave a small state … a study of 27 mixed-use U.S. neighborhoods concluded that parking was, at peak times, oversupplied by 65 percent.
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.
-Henry Grabar
Henry Grabar, journalist, and author of the new highly anticipated book Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, will discuss the impact of parking on the character of neighborhoods, the size and cost of new construction, traffic, transportation, and even the course of floodwaters. He’ll also share how cities like Santa Fe can reform parking in ways that actually make it more convenient for drivers while increasing affordability, walkability, and livability.
Henry Grabar is a journalist who writes about cities. He’s a staff writer at Slate and a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His work has been published in Architect, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Harper’s, the Wall Street Journal, and other outlets, and he has produced podcasts for Decoder Ring, 99 Percent Invisible, What Next, and other shows. He was the editor of The Future of Transportation anthology (Metropolis Books, 2019), and the author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, which was published in May, 2023 by Penguin Press.
Childcare and interpretation will be provided. When reserving your ticket please indicate if you need childcare or interpretation.
Free food and refreshments following the event.