Reading List

From Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar. There is more housing for each car in the United States than there is housing for each person:

Most Americans, of course, do not have to fight for parking. On the contrary, the combination of urban renewal, public lots, and parking requirements for private development were astonishingly successful at creating ample space to park. 

By square footage, there is more housing for each car in the United States than there is housing for each person. 

All this asphalt constitutes a kind of ecology unto itself, changing the way air and water and animals interact with human civilization. It changes the way we behave, too. 

"The effect of the cars reaches far beyond the cars themselves," wrote Christopher Alexander in A Pattern Language, his landmark study of human landscapes. "They create a maze of driveways, garage doors, asphalt, and concrete surfaces, and building elements which people cannot use. When the density goes beyond the limit, we suspect that people feel the social potential of the environment has disappeared." 

Perhaps most importantly, making it easier to park did not get rid of the life-draining experience of traffic. On the contrary, it created traffic.