Specific blights have been ravaging American cities for a century. And now, for the first time, new data allow us to measure its toll.
“In the heart of our largest cities, some of the most valuable public land on earth is reserved exclusively for the free storage of private cars,” writes Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the WorldHe points out that there is more housing space per car than there is per person in the United States.
Grabar lists some of the serious symptoms of America’s auto sickness — the fight for coveted parking spots that turns fatal “dozens of times a year.” But the fundamental problem isn’t that parking in America is too hard—it’s that it’s too easy. Ample parking spaces have hollowed out city life.
Earlier this year, the Parking Reform Network, a nonprofit advocacy group, compiled and mapped data on the parking lots in the center of U.S. cities that weave downtowns together like empty quilt squares. PRN cites a double cost for these batches. First, liveability and walkability suffer as housing becomes less dense and more expensive, crowded out by stationary cars or empty spaces. Second, the opportunity cost is high, as parking spaces are often concentrated around main streets and historic centres.
“Downtown is where the community is, and there’s a lot of activity, a lot of movement, a lot of energy,” Thomas Carpenito, PRN’s program director, told me. “You really can’t have it if you’re parking every other block.”
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However, for example, 30 percent of downtown Detroit is used for parking, 28 percent in Louisville, 24 percent in Dallas, and 21 percent in Phoenix. Large swaths of urban centers across the country are devoted entirely to parking cars. Around 20% of all urban centers studied were car parks. “Every parking lot on the map is a demolished building,” Carpenito said of Detroit. “This is the Motown – the car is the future, and the city is transformed to accommodate the car.”
The result, as urban planner Jeff Speck once said, is that “smooth traffic and ample parking make our downtowns accessible but not worth it.”
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The ubiquity of parking lots is caused by the ubiquitous urban parking minimums – strict rules on the number of parking spaces required for each development. But these quotas are outdated and pseudoscientific, often leading to unnecessary spending or demolition, or no development at all. Instead, Carpenito sees cities as living ecosystems: build parking where you need it, and don’t build it where you don’t.
My hometown, New York, wasn’t hit by the worst damage — only 1% of its center is parking lots, according to PRN. But even here, the city’s 3 million parking spaces are equivalent to about 12 Central Park on-street parking spaces. Nowhere is the threat posed to city dwellers more apparent than the ever-larger cars that surround them. This gave rise to the slogan, “street parking is theft”.
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More promising according to PRN Parking Reform Map, dozens of cities have eliminated or lowered parking minimums. Carpenito cites the housing crisis as a catalyst; maybe humans should have more space than cars after all. By coincidence, we meet on the ground floor of an apartment building that used to be a parking lot.
In 2020, New York began sealing off certain neighborhoods as car-free zones at certain times. To walk along them is to re-experience familiar cities. We feel that social interaction is allowed and encouraged. We felt as though the outdoors were just for us.
oliver.roeder@ft.com, @ollie
Map by Kristo Mikkonen