Book cover of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar
Engineering & Transportation

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

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. […Learn More]