Paved Paradise

"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. 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 ... story about the strange and wonderful superorganism that is the modern American city. In a ... mix of history, politics, and reportage, Grabar ... surveys the pain points of the nation's parking crisis"-- von Grabar, Henry