Join us for a conversation with Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise, which gives a surprisingly entertaining history of parking policy in America!
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Attributions
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was produced and edited by Parker Seaman, transcribed by Stina Neel, and hosted by Ian R Buck. Many thanks to Henry Grabar for coming on the show! We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:00] Ian: Welcome to the Streets.MN podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from beautiful uptown Minneapolis, Minnesota, I am your host, Ian R. Buck It’s time for another episode of Parker’s Book Club, this time featuring Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise.
Let’s get into it.
[00:00:26] Parker: Henry, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:28] Henry: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:28] Parker: I think a good place to just kinda start off is why don’t you tell us, uh, a bit about the book? You released it in 2023, right?
[00:00:37] Henry: It’s been a minute. Uh, it’s been a wild ride since, since the book was released in, uh, at least as far as learning things about parking goes.
But, uh, the book came out of my experience as a journalist writing about urban issues such as housing, transportation, architecture, the design of cities, and I realized that there was an undercurrent running through all of those topics that I had never really understood to be such an important part of the way that our cities look and feel and function, and that was parking.
And at that time I didn’t even know Donald Shoup from Donald Trump, but, uh- … but I soon learned that there was a whole world of people out there who had acquired this secret knowledge that parking is actually the thing, um, that determines, um, you know, how much an apartment costs and what a building looks like and how many neighbors you have on a certain block, and how a city functions- Yeah
and, uh, whether people ride a mass transit system. And so that… the book is the result of, of that kind of line of inquiry. And, uh, as I mentioned-
[00:01:51] Ian: I like that you refer to it as, like, a secret knowledge, ’cause it does, it does feel like being able to see the Matrix sometimes. Like, wa- walking around a city and, like- Right, and-
understanding the causes and effects of, yeah, what you’re looking at.
[00:02:05] Henry: And, and like, and like, you know, like the Matrix, it, it does… acquiring this knowledge does create a moment of introspection where you have to ask, “Am I better off now than I was before?” Right.
[00:02:16] Ian: Yeah. Right. Was ignorance bliss?
[00:02:18] Henry: Do I really need-
Now I s- Do I really need to be, like, reading every parking sign?
Do I need to, like, go across the street and see how much the meter is on, on this particular block on a Saturday afternoon? Or, like, go inside the building, go inside this residential garage and, like, check the occupancy, you know? Um, does that, is that, has that been im- an improvement for- Yeah … for me? Like, you know.
It’s a mixed, it’s a mixed blessing.
[00:02:41] Ian: So working as a journalist, like, what outlets were you writing for? Like, where, where is your byline?
[00:02:47] Henry: At the time that I was working on this book, I was working at Slate, and so, you know, this kept coming up inadvertently in story after story. Like, I remember writing about bus rapid transit, and one of the obstacles to that was, oh, you need to take away parking spaces to create these lanes for the buses.
And then I was writing about housing costs, and I learned that, you know, a big component of these affordable housing- uh, buildings was the cost of building all this required parking. And then I was writing about sort of NIMBYism and community meetings, and I learned that one of the big things that people bring up in meetings when they talk about new housing is the threat, um, to their on-street parking supply.
Um, and so, you know, I think going back, I was sort of able to trace It was very helpful when I was writing the book proposal, uh, trace little components of what would become the book, um, out of, out, out of these, these various articles that I’d written for Slate.
[00:03:40] Ian: Yeah. I, I remember, like, when I was first kinda getting into the urbanist space and reading, you know, a lot of, like, local to the Twin Cities bloggers.
Uh, you know, and Bill Lindeke, like, every time that any public debate came up, he would always find, like, the line, “Neighbors are concerned about traffic and parking,” right? Like, and then it appeared in almost every newspaper article about any, you know, housing or bike lane or, like, anything that you could imagine that we might change about a city.
He would find, like, that exact phrase in the…
[00:04:15] Parker: Which is, which is interesting, and I, I know you cover this well in the book, but it’s not just traffic and parking. It is easy, free, accessible, no, no, no problem parking. Like, if there is parking available and you have to pay for it, it’s… That’s, that’s fine, but if, if I have to look for it at all, then suddenly it’s a problem.
[00:04:35] Henry: Right. People’s standards for parking is absurdly high. And, um, one of the things that I have learned since I published the book was, um, I was in Arlington, Virginia, which is a suburb of Washington, DC, recently, and they were telling me about how they did a study of their residential permits, right? And I know this is an issue that is…
I was actually interviewed by a reporter at the Star Tribune recently on this very subject, which is neighbors complaining about people parking on their block. And the question that Arlington was posing was, um, how full does the parking on the block have to be before the neighbors will say- … we’re developing a parking problem on this block?
Mm-hmm. And the answer that they found in Arlington was 50%. So- Once the curb reaches 50% occupancy, um, then people start to panic about, um, losing all their parking spaces. And, like, obviously that’s not a standard that you would apply to another service you were, um, consuming, right? Like, you wouldn’t show up at the bar and be like, “This bar is 50% full, so I need to call the manager,” or something.
[00:05:43] Ian: Yeah.
[00:05:44] Henry: There’s a problem here. Yeah.
[00:05:45] Ian: Well, I, I can think of some things, like early in the pandemic when everybody was freaking out about whether or not we were gonna run out of toilet paper, and I think that a lot of that was because as soon as, like, I don’t know, 50% of the toilet paper rolls, you know, the, the big packets of rolls are gone from the shelf, you think, like, “Holy crap,” like we’re, we’re- Nice.
Thank you. Uh, like, it seems scarce all of a sudden. And, and I think toilet paper is similar to cars, is, like, an object that just takes up a lot more space, like, on a shelf than-
[00:06:19] Henry: This is a, this is a comparison I have not heard before. This is very interesting. Um, you know, on Maslow’s, like, uh, hierarchy of needs, uh, I guess they occupy a- Similar, similar roles as, uh, uh, something that, that most people feel they, they absolutely can’t live without.
But, but I guess in, in the case of parking, I mean, the thing is, right, like if you don’t have that perfect parking spot that’s free, that’s right in front of your house, you often have another parking spot that’s like eight feet away.
[00:06:46] Ian: Right.
[00:06:46] Henry: So the choice here is not between parking or no parking, but between the perfect, um, free, convenient, available parking spot that I’ve always been accustomed to, whether it’s in front of my house or in front of the business that I operate, or at my, um, kids’ elementary school or, or whatever.
Um, and it’s the, you know, the, the difference between that and, um, something that’s just slightly different, right? And that’s, I think what, what parking reformers find so vexing and, and I guess also, you know, to put it optimistically, like there’s, there’s a lot of room for improvement here because what we’re faced with in most communities is not actually a choice between parking or no parking, but just to say if we could adjust our standards for parking ever so slightly Um, and accept that, um, maybe some parking should be paid, some parking should be two blocks away, um, some parking should be here, some parking should be there, rather than, uh, a free, convenient, available space in front of every single business and every single residence, then we can unlock all these other great things, um, that could exist i- in this city.
And so I guess that’s the optimistic lens on it is if you’re able to unlock that perspective change in how you think about parking, um, and what, what a good parking space looks like to you, all kinds of good things will follow from there.
[00:08:03] Ian: Right.
[00:08:03] Henry: One of the things that we’ve seen over the last five, 10 years is lots of changes in the land use regime in thinking about whether we’re going to permit new apartments to be built without parking spaces and so on, and, and unfortunately, not a lot of follow-up in the transportation space to say, “Well, if we’re going to allow a bunch of apartments without parking and we want people to live here without cars, then we need to redesign our streets, and we need to properly fund our transit system, and we need to make sure that people don’t feel like second-class citizens when they are trying to get somewhere, uh, on foot or on a bicycle.”
And that is a crucial corollary because otherwise you’re building a bunch of housing without parking, but the message you’re sending to the people who live in those units is, “We expect you to drive, um, and, and we’ve built this city, um, with that expectation in mind.”
[00:08:54] Ian: Yeah. But, uh, I mean, like you, like, repeatedly drive home in the book, like the, the main thing that encourages people to drive and makes them feel like they have to use a car is the fact that like there’s so much parking available.
And because there’s so much parking available, the amenities that you’re trying to get to get pushed farther and farther apart from each other. And yeah, so it’s like chicken and egg problem, like you gotta change one of them before, before the other can follow.
[00:09:22] Henry: It’s a cycle, right? And I think we’ve, we’ve witnessed this cycle in most American cities which used to be places where you could pretty comfortably travel without a car, and in fact, many households did happily exist without a car or with just one car, right?
Because there were still, uh… even if one member of the household needed a car for certain errands or sh- you know, taking the kids to, to the park on Saturday, there were still a number of things you could do, such as get to work or get to the sh- get to the shops or get to the doctor’s office that you could do on transit or on foot.
And, um, as we have embraced this more auto-centric mode of planning, that has entailed a low-density style of development, um, that has made it impossible to, to do those trips without driving. And so you do get this kind of vicious cycle of auto-dependent land use, um, requiring people to drive, and then once people are driving everywhere, well, yes, parking does, uh, come to be seen as a, as a kind of a vital life force that we need, you know, we need to, to access all these things that we wanna do.
[00:10:27] Ian: Back to what you were talking about, Parker, with, like, changing people’s preferences and expectations for, like, what is an appropriate kind of parking experience. Um, I, I think it, it is notable to state that, like… um, and I think this came up kind of in a roundabout fashion in, in the book a couple of times that, like even people today have different opinions and different expectations around parking.
Um, like Henry, I think you mentioned the, the, the classic tension of like, you know, a couple where they, they hate driving together to a place because, like, they can’t stand their partner’s, uh, you know, like, method of trying to find a good parking spot, right?
[00:11:10] Parker: I know I’m of the mindset of whatever is the first one I see is the best one.
Because then I- as soon as I get out of the car, I can start walking and then f- actually feel like I’m moving. If I have to keep circling around for quote, unquote good one, I just get more and more frustrated. Which is, I… There is a, a Costco not too far from where I live that is able to be biked to. Not, not without like, you know, a bit of effort, especially on the way back carrying Costco amounts-
of stuff. But it is so much more enjoyable going there on bike than by car, because I can pull up right to the front door where the bicycle parking is. Mm. And I’ve never, ever had to worry about having enough space when I am getting there that way, versus driving where it, at the very best, I have to go to the very furthest corner and hope that there is a spot, uh- Yeahavailable. And there not al- there not always is. Wow. Is it always? Yeah.
[00:12:08] Ian: I don’t know. Even in that giant parking lot, there’s-
[00:12:09] Parker: Uh-huh …
[00:12:10] Ian: Oh, wow.
[00:12:11] Parker: I, you know, you know what I’m saying? We need more parking.
[00:12:14] Henry: There was an article in, in USA Today about this very, uh, this very topic actually, the Costco parking lot as a, as a sort of battle, battle space.
Um-
[00:12:23] Parker: And the antithesis to that, uh, of, I th- I don’t remember if you mentioned this in the book or not, but a Trader Joe’s parking lot.
[00:12:31] Ian: Oh yeah, that definitely came up in the book.
[00:12:32] Parker: Yeah. They’re, they are very small. I have not had the same issue in a Costco parking lot that I’ve had in a Trader Joe’s parking lot.
‘Cause it seems like it’s a lot quicker turnaround in a smaller place like that.
[00:12:43] Ian: Mm.
[00:12:44] Parker: About the same time, if I’m driving to one, about the same time that I’m pulling up, someone is pulling out, and I can get something. And because it’s so small, nothing is like better or worse than the other, it’s just whatever is there.
[00:12:56] Henry: Yeah. Trader Joe’s has been pretty tight-lipped about how they think about site selection and parking, but the way I, the way I’ve heard it described is they have a normal- parking supply for a grocery store of their square footage. It’s just that within that square footage, they stock many fewer products than a typical grocery store, and so they have, and, and, and, and because they do that, they have really great prices, and so they have a much higher density of people inside the store, and therefore more cars in the parking lot than, than you would expect based on a, a store of that size.
Which, all of which is to say that the congestion in the Trader Joe’s parking lot is actually intimately related to the low cost of the goods and the, the, you know, the entire business model, right? Um, they, they, they feel like their product is good enough. Um, and l- you know, I think there’s an analogy there, um, to a lot of towns and main streets that have this debate constantly about how important it is to provide free and easy parking.
And one of the things that I sometimes suggest to, you know, city council people who are concerned about this is, do you really think that that’s the thing that’s keeping people coming to your place? Like, is that the most important thing? And I think they could use a Trader Joe’s style dose of confidence about the offerings of their main street, of their, their little stretch, right?
Which is to say, “You know what? We’re good enough that even if the parking is a little bit of a hassle, people are gonna still, um, keep coming.” Um, and obviously there’s ways to make the parking less of a hassle, but to say that, as many towns do, to say that if we start charging 50 cents an hour or whatever, um, suddenly everybody will abandon us for, for, for the mall and the suburbs, I think that, that, that reflects a, a mistake that we’ve made too many times in the past, which is to assume that, uh, people are making decisions about where to go, um, based on free and easy parking.
Which, as important as it is, is, is not really the most important thing in the world.
[00:14:59] Parker: Well, that reminds me of two things. Of, I know you’ve said this before, um, on the show, Ian, of if you’re going to compete with the suburbs in terms of- Mm … amount of parking and amount of space, you’re, in, in comparison to, like, the, like the inner city, you’re always going to lose.
They’re always gonna have more space. So there’s, that’s, that’s, that’s, there’s a, has to be a different sort of angle that you take.
[00:15:19] Ian: Right. Right. And- We have to find, like, what is unique about our urban landscape to attract customers.
[00:15:26] Parker: Right. Further on that, not too far from where I live, there was across the street from each other a bakery and an ice cream store.
[00:15:35] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:35] Parker: And the ice cream store shut down, and when they shut down, they put on their Instagram and they put a flyer in their door going, saying like, “It’s just the community doesn’t wanna support us because there’s just not parking in front of our building ever since they put the bike lanes there, and so it’s really hard for people to get us.”
I should note they’re also, they’re, they’re like right on a corner, so if you just walk around the corner, there is instantly on-street parking. Uh, that typically has a couple peop- couple spots available. You know, saying that there’s, okay, there’s no support, there’s no parking, it’s just impossible to make a business run.
The bakery across the street from them, every day that they are open I have seen a line out the door of people waiting to get in, ’cause it’s a really good bakery right, like in the, right in the midst of, you know, a bunch of housing and a bunch of, uh, uh, a neighborhood. It’s the neighborhood bakery. And it m- makes me really question how much of their issues they had was because of lack of parking or maybe the ice cream just wasn’t that good.
‘Cause there’s other ice creams in the neighborhood that do pretty well.
[00:16:38] Ian: Yeah.
[00:16:38] Henry: What I think it’s, it’s kind of, it’s not the kind of thing that you’d ever really wanna say at like a community planning meeting when this was being discussed, but the truth of it is that a highly successful walkable commercial neighborhood is one where people do have to walk a distance from their cars to get to their destination, and it’s precisely that attribute which many people see as a downside, as an annoying thing.
But it’s precisely that walk, that distance from the car to the shop, that creates the opportunity for serendipity, for stopping into other businesses, for the kind of process of urban discovery and seeing people and, you know, just stretching your legs that like make, you know… I mean, that, that’s like kind of the foundation of like human society, right?
So, uh, to, to, to i- to, to, so to hold up the idea that you should be able to park in front of every business as the, as the kind of, um, thing that we’re shooting for, that’s fine to like maybe say that that’s your, your goal, but like that’s actually not what you, what you want, I think.
[00:17:42] Ian: Right. Yeah. Um, can I do a little segment of, uh, like, local angle things that I noted in the book?
We- ‘Cause like, like Minneapolis, the Twin Cities comes up more often, more times in this book than I expected.
[00:17:56] Parker: It is streets.mn, so yeah. Bring up the MN.
[00:17:59] Henry: And, and, and all of that was before I, I, I came to Minneapolis to talk about parking. So I’m now, uh, I was in Minneapolis and I was also in, in Rochester.
Nice. So I’m now even, even better informed than I was then.
[00:18:12] Ian: Um, so Southdale Mall, of course, uh, gets brought up fairly early in the book because it was, uh, I mean, it’s notable as the very first, uh, indoor mall, uh, in, in the world, I think. Uh, but I had never heard the phrase, um, uh, some- somebody, uh, s- I don’t remember who you were quoting in the book, but, uh, it, it was referred to as a pleasure dome behind a parking lot, uh, which uh, is very evocative.
[00:18:41] Henry: I think one of the things that really stuck out to me reading about Victor Gruen, who was the designer of the mall, and the sort of considered the kinda godfather of the American mall-
[00:18:50] Ian: Yeah …
[00:18:51] Henry: was the idea that this was one of the first times in American history that anyone had ever lost their car in the parking lot.
Mm.
[00:19:00] Ian: Mm.
[00:19:01] Henry: That this is kinda the first time that that happens. Which I guess it had to happen for the first time at some point, but like, um, I don’t know, it’s just, it kind of m- definitely marks a, a turning point in our, in our, in our parking infrastructure.
[00:19:15] Ian: Yeah. Yep.
[00:19:16] Henry: Um- And, and ironically, sorry, just to go back to the, the, the previous point, again, another demonstration of the fact that if you provide a really quality destination, people are willing to walk like half a mile from their car to get there.
It just so happens that it’s a mall, so people don’t think about it that way. But, um, but you know, if you were to apply that same standard to an urban environment, then parking problem solved.
[00:19:40] Ian: And, and I mean, on the subject of like people are willing to walk a long distance, um, it is, it is funny how often like urban retailers will, will say like, “Well, the, the stuff that I sell is inconvenient to carry, you know, either it’s big and heavy or bulky or whatever, you know?
So like people need to be able to have their car right outside of the store front door, otherwise they’re never gonna shop here.” And I’m like, how, how do people get their stuff from the Southdale Mall to their car, you know, a quarter of a mile away in the, in the parking lot? Like, it clearly we can do it.
[00:20:21] Henry: We just need to have a municipal shopping cart network set up. Yeah. In the 1920s when everybody took the trolley downtown, stores had ways of delivering heavy product- Right, right … uh, heavy products to your house to, so that you wouldn’t have to schlep them to, to your car, um, or, or, or on the train. So, and obviously in this era of, um, e-commerce, I think everyone, every business owner is pretty, um, pretty familiar with, with how to get, uh, objects to people’s houses.
[00:20:47] Ian: Right. Right.
[00:20:49] Parker: They should put signs up in the parking garages at these malls that say, “You are a quarter mile, you’re a half mile away,” or whatever, “from the nearest exit,” or near the entrance to the mall. And just like provide that context. ‘Cause I wonder how much of it is- Mm … a psychological thing of, well, I’m, I’m still in the parking complex of the larger thing that I’m a part of, so it’s the same walk.
It’s not a different walk.
[00:21:11] Ian: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:21:13] Henry: Um- I think part of it is also the quality of the walk, right? Like, um, I’m not saying it’s pleasant to walk through a mall parking lot, but walking through the mall to get to the store you’re going to is a very stimulating experience and full of all kinds of fun interactions that- Um, you know, also characterize a great urban main street, right?
And unfortunately, the more of your downtown that you demolish to build parking lots and garages, the more you are sapping that experience. And so when you tell somebody to park five blocks away from the center of town and those five blocks are composed of windswept parking lots, then yeah, no one’s gonna be particularly enthusiastic about that.
Um, but if those five blocks are thriving local businesses and restaurants with people spilling out of them and, uh, you know, a nice little town square with a band playing, then that’s a whole different story.
[00:22:06] Ian: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right. Another local angle. Uh, Chris Meyer got a shout-out, uh, for his, uh, at this point it was a, it was a, it’s a classic.
Uh, his, his stunt of buying every single, uh, city council member, uh, a copy of The High Cost of Free Parking, which at the time, uh, the, like, the city council had to consult with the, the city lawyer to ask, like, “Are we allowed to accept this gift?” Like, is, you know, what’s the limitation on that kind of thing?
Um, and, uh, but, but they, they did allow it and, and, um, you know, who, who’s to say exactly what kind, what impact that had on the, you know, their internal calculations of whether or not we should eliminate, uh, parking minimums, but, uh, eventually we did end up with that, with that outcome in both, in both Minneapolis and St.Paul.
[00:23:00] Henry: And Chris later did the same thing with the Minnesota Legislature.
[00:23:05] Ian: Nice.
[00:23:05] Henry: Uh-
[00:23:06] Ian: Yes … where- ‘Cause he is now, he serves as the legislative aide for Omar Fateh, I think. I think that’s
[00:23:14] Henry: who’s off- And there’s a-
[00:23:14] Ian: Yeah …
[00:23:15] Henry: there’s a photograph, if you haven’t, if your audience is not familiar with the physical copy of Donald Shoup’s book, The High Cost of Free Parking, the, it’s, like, the size of a brick.
And it weighs about as much. And so when Chris bought, I don’t know what it was, 150- How many members of the legislature are there? Um, uh, let’s say several hundred copies of this book and put them on a plastic folding table, it, uh, it really stretched the, uh- … the structural integrity of that table.
[00:23:45] Ian: Legendary behavior right there. And then, uh, this last local angle was somebody who I, uh, have actually not heard about before, but Bridget Brown, uh, a Minneapolitan who wrote a children’s book called Spo- Spot’s Parking Lot. Um- I’m feeling like I need to check that out, uh, uh, somehow. But yeah, that was, uh, she’s- she was, like, part of the, uh, you know, kind of online community of, of Donald Shoup, like, followers.
Uh, and happened to be, live in Minneapolis, and she wrote a kids book, and I was like, “Whoa.”
[00:24:25] Henry: My kid has, uh, Spot’s Parking Lot, and, um, it also has a, has a, the rare children’s book with a, with a blurb from, uh, Donald Shoup on the back.
[00:24:33] Parker: Yeah, right. I want to know, how do you approach parking in a way that makes it interesting?
It’s something that’s just kind of part of everyday life, but very connected to so many aspects of life. So how do you approach writing about something like that in a way that makes it interesting and succeed?
[00:24:53] Henry: Well, um, first of all, thank you for saying that it, that I succeeded. I think when I, you know, when I pitched the book, one of the re- one of the reasons that the, um, that I did so was because I, I realized that there hadn’t been a kind of nonfiction book for generalists about this topic, which is, as I mentioned, you know, pretty key aspect of urban planning.
Uh, and then as I started to write it, I realized why nobody had written- … why people write, people write a lot of books about, like, the architecture of great buildings and, uh, not so many about, like, you know, parking lots. The secret to making people interested in things is always the same, and it’s to tell stories and to tell stories about people.
And I think maybe you have to look a little harder when the topic is parking, um, than you do when, when, when you’re writing about, you know, Frank Lloyd Wright or something like that. One of the ways in which I was very fortunate when I started working on the book was that the people who had gotten interested in parking, who had had their, their dreams, you know, dashed by parking requirements or who had been captivated by, by Shoup’s teachings or, um, who had, uh, in other ways, you know, parking had played an important role in, in their lives, they, they found me or I found them, and, and they were so happy to, to have somebody to, to talk to about this, this, this subject.
And that w- that’s, it’s not always like that as a journalist. Often you’re trying to tell stories and people are trying to withhold information or they’re, they’re reluctant to go on the record or, or what have you. And then, uh, with parking, people just, people just were so, so thrilled to find that somebody was taking an interest in what had become for them, uh, you know, a personal obsession in, in some cases.
And then I guess the other thing is that, you know, the feeling that for this, like with, you know, a number of other kind of m- micro histories or, or, or object histories, there is the feeling that you can kind of trace the outlines of a much bigger story in the story of this smaller thing. And I think for me, looking at the history of parking and the way we treated parking, it was, it was a way of telling the story of the American city, right?
The, the kind of the, the, the, the, the kind of glory days and then the, the gradual abandonment and then finally this, this moment we’re in right now of trying to, to rebuild, um, what’s been lost.
[00:27:21] Ian: One of the stories that really captured me was the The woman in Los Angeles who, you know, we start in the streetcar days and she used to go downtown to one particular retailer where she could find narrow shoes because she had narrow feet and that was the only place where she could buy shoes that were gonna fit her.
And then, like, following how that journey downtown to go and buy those shoes changed over the decades as more and more parking got added to the city. H- how d- how did you find a story like that?
[00:27:57] Henry: Basically what happened was when I started writing the chapter about Los Angeles, I was interested in this policy reform that had been undertaken at the time of the millennium, where Los Angeles stopped requiring parking in these renovations of historic buildings downtown.
And, um, Donald Shoup and Michael Manville at UCLA had published a paper about what happened, um, after that change was made, and it turned out that, um, all of these, up to this point, basically abandoned historic downtown buildings had been renovated and revitalized as apartments and had brought thousands and thousands of new households to live in downtown Los Angeles, which up to that point had been a pretty moribund, um, area in a lot of places.
And I was interested in that, and one of the things that I learned was that one of the people who was instrumental in creating that policy change was this woman, Carol Schatz, who was involved with the Los Angeles, the downtown Los Angeles, basically the, the business improvement district. And so I asked Carol about how she had come to be interested in this subject, and that’s when I learned that she had in fact grown up in Los Angeles herself and had been coming downtown for years.
So, you know, sometimes you just get lucky and somebody ends up having a great story like that that turns out to be tied to the, the topic at hand, but, but it’s not always… It’s not just luck. I mean, I think the other thing is that people who wind up being interested in the things that you’re writing about often have stories that led them to that place, right?
So there is a kind of logic to it as you begin to ask people like, “Well, how did you, um, how did you get into this, this topic?” Um, and I guess one of the, the luxuries of, of writing a book is that you, you are allowed to tell people’s stories with that level of detail that wouldn’t be permitted to you in a, you know, on a, uh, a, a, a magazine article or, um, uh, on, you know, in a short, uh, vertical form video.
[00:30:06] Parker: For me, the thing that really made Excessive Parking stand out to me is I do a lot of editing on OpenStreetMap, and so when I’d go to like small, small towns kind of from back where I’m from in South Dakota and like use satellite imagery to start mapping stuff around, I would make, you know, areas that I’d map and then mark that as parking and just keep doing that over and over and over.
And then when I look at the map after I’ve, you know, made all these changes, I’m like, this, you know, business stretch of this town where there’s supposed to be all these shops and stuff, most of that space is just for parking. There’s actually precious few businesses there in comparison to the space that’s spent for actually getting parking there.
So that’s kind of what started my process on it.
[00:30:49] Ian: Um- This is your version of SimCity
[00:30:51] Parker: Yes. Yeah. Should talk about that for just a moment actually, ’cause that’s an interesting story.
[00:30:56] Ian: Yeah, in the, in, and Henry covers this in the book, that the, the developers of SimCity, the video game, uh, were trying to put together a really realistic simulation, like what cities look like and how they function and everything, and then they decided, “Wait a minute, this is gonna look terrible if we have an accurate amount of parking, surface parking, uh, just visible on the screen.”
Uh, so they kind of hand-waved that away, and like, these, these cities, uh, magically have a lot of underground parking.
[00:31:28] Parker: For free.
[00:31:28] Ian: Yeah.
[00:31:29] Parker: Not, not built, not built into the cost.
[00:31:30] Ian: Yeah.
Before we continue, let’s take a quick break in the parklet. We have an upcoming event that’s very closely tied to the podcast. We’re teaming up with Our Streets to host a structured panel discussion and social hour focused on what if we elect transportation champions. The panel will be moderated by our very own Stina Neel with guests from Sierra Club, BikeMN, Neighbors for More Neighbors, Sustain St. Paul, and Our Streets. It will be September 17th from 6:30 to 8:30 at Arbeiter Brewing. Tickets are a suggested donation of $10. All right, let’s get back to our chat with Henry Grabar
[00:32:23] Henry: I grew up in New York, and so I grew up in an environment where it was, mm, you know, you kinda took it for granted that you could walk everywhere or ride the train or ride a bicycle. And I think it was only later that when I traveled to other places in the United States, I remember going to the various downtowns and thinking like, “Where is everything?Where is everyone?”
And so I think having that perspective kinda made me ask that question, right? And, and I think that, that was– that’s one way into how I became curious about the trajectory of our cities and, uh, and how things got to be, um, the way they are. And then the other component of it is that I, I think the first time that I ever read a, or probably read a word about, about parking as a land use was reading, um, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, where Jane Jacobs talks about border vacuums, and she has a chapter about border vacuums.
And a- actually, amusingly, one of the ones she talks about is Central Park, which today is obviously much beloved, but, um, does not get the Jane Jacobs seal of approval as an urban- … design feature. Um, but what she writes about is the idea that if you have this big vacant use, um, you really suck the life out of everything adjacent to it, and I think that can be applied to parking lots and also to freeways, um, and, and in some cases to very large park spaces.
And, uh, and, and, you know, so the realization that I guess people… That there was a body of critical thinking and writing about something as seemingly overlooked as parking, um, was, uh, was, uh, news to me when I was probably 17.
[00:34:10] Ian: Yeah, and I, I think like highways going through d- you know, urban centers is a subject that I think gets a lot of attention, right?
It’s a, it’s a very like… It’s a very visceral, kinda easy to latch onto story about like, yes, we literally like razed these, the, the most diverse, like working class neighborhoods in a bunch of cities to, to put these highways through. And that’s like, that’s a really compelling narrative, you know, just on its own.
Um, and, and I, and I, I like that you, that you, you touched on it like once in the book, but didn’t really get into it because that would’ve distracted from the h- like the point of the book is, hey, parking is super overlooked, and it has so many outsized effects. Um, you know, and so the… Like, you can’t focus too much on, you know, okay, like having highways go straight into our urban cores also, you know, contributes to like sucking people out of, out of the cities.
Um, but remember, we’re focusing on parking here.
[00:35:19] Henry: Yeah, I mean, there is one big story, and that big story is about the way that powerful people in the 1950s and ’60s- Mm … conceived of urban development writ large, and conceived of the relationship between downtown and the suburbs. And, um, I think at least the way I was learning this story at the time, there was a great deal of…
There was an implication that a lot of this planning was nefarious. Mm. And some of it was. Um, obviously the sites where the highways were located were chosen, um, in part because they would demolish multiethnic, often Black neighborhoods, um, in the hopes that just by dispersing these peoples… uh, dispersing these people from their communities, um, the, you know, the, that community would, would cease to exist.
And, um, so that’s, I think, a story that, uh, many people who now learn the story of the American city are, are learning. Um, but the part that’s was almost more surprising to me was the idea that people built these things because they thought they were gonna help the cities. And the kind of well-mean- the figure of the well-meaning downtown, um, mogul- Or political leader who thought that, you know, downtown survival was really gonna depend on, um, bulldozing a bunch of buildings to build parking lots.
Um, that adds a kind of, you know, a, a different kind of tragedy to, to, to that story of the American city, um, which is, you know, these extremely misguided, um, ultimately well-meaning, but ultimately very misguided plans to, to try and, um, rescue the city by making it easier to drive to, and that is part of the freeway logic as well, um, was the thinking that, you know, not just we’re gonna make it easy for people, um, to move to the suburbs, um, but, but we’re gonna make it easy for the people who’ve already moved to the suburbs to be able to come and work and live and shop and play in the city and all that, and that the freeways and the parking and all that will be part of, um, the city’s survival.
And, um, I think one of the things we’ve, we’ve seen is that, that, that it doesn’t really work that way, and if you, um, if you demolish a good chunk of downtown, um, in the interest of suburban drivers, um, you’re, you know, you’re sacrificing a lot of what, what makes a city great in the first place.
[00:37:57] Parker: Yeah, and we see a lot of that same sort of misguided but fervent belief of this is necessary to, for the continued survival and improvement of things, uh, when it comes to a lot of, you know, uh, urban space advocacy for improving stuff.
There’s the Lyndale Avenue work that’s been done, or advocacy for the Lyndale Avenue reconstruction that’s been happening here in Minneapolis, um, where they’re gonna be redoing the, uh, for context, they’re gonna be redoing the road ’cause it hasn’t had, like, substantial work to it in 90 years, so that’s also gonna come with, you know, uh, pipelines and all those other sort of infrastructure under the road as part of it.
And so there’s been advocacy for since this road is getting updated, why not, you know, make it modern and improve on the mistakes we’ve made before and add, you know, transit and bicycle infrastructure as part of it. And there’s been a couple of businesses along that stretch been going, “No, you’ll destroy the fabric of the neighborhood if you change it.
If you remove our parking, everything’s going to fall apart.” And it’s not that they just hate bicyclists. It is just a f- a fear of if we change things, it’s going to destroy everything. Not, not really looking further into how this could be beneficial or probably will be beneficial because it has been pretty much every other time it’s been done, just responding with fear.
[00:39:14] Henry: I think that that zero sum thinking unfortunately pervades a lot of aspects of- A conversation about what happens in cities, and you see it obviously a lot when we talk about housing, and we talk about rezoning and possibility of cities growing and different types of buildings being built and different types of people moving in.
And, um, so often that conversation gets reduced to the impacts on traffic and parking as if the arrival of new people in the neighborhood can be summed up by the parking spaces that they will take up and not by- … you know, the idea that we might have new friends, new people we might not otherwise have met, um, new people supporting local businesses, a critical density of people to support a local gym or keep the movie theater in business or, or whatever you have.
And so it is a– It’s a mindset shift, right? But, um, but I think there is– y-you have to keep that in your head that there is a, you know, that better things are possible even if, um, even if, um, the quality of the parking might not be, uh, what we’ve been accustomed to, uh, in, y-you know, uh, what we were accustomed to growing up.
One other point I want to make about that is that, uh, for a lot of us, uh, of a certain age grew up at a time when cities were depopulating and, and were quite down on their luck. And so, you know, I’ll speak to my own experience as a, as a child of New York. Uh, when I was born, New York was pretty close to its all-time population low.
And so the expectations that I received as a child about how easy it was to park and to drive were expectations formed in a city that was pretty much at its, at its lowest ebb. And since then, uh, New York has added millions of people and millions of jobs. And so yeah, it is a little harder to park and to drive now.
Uh, but that’s a trade-off, um, that has come with, uh, an enormous amount of cultural vibrancy and prosperity and, um, improvements in people’s quality of life and all that. And I think that’s true for a lot of cities, right? Is like if your expectations of how easy it was to park were formed in the bad old days, um, then yeah, um that change will, will, will pose a challenge to that, that way of thinking.
[00:41:35] Ian: One section of the book that, that I had kind of a, a personal connection, a personal reaction to was, uh, uh, talking about, like, the beatnik parking attendants and how, you know, yeah, the… It was like, it, it was a, it was a terrible job, but they felt, like, very powerful in this, you know, t- tiny little kingdom that they were in charge of.
Um, and it reminded me of, you know, my, uh, you know, 17 to, like, 23-year-old years when I was working at a Cub Scout camp. And, you know, once a week when we had a new group of campers coming in and we needed to park all of these families in our parking lots, right? You know, and of course it’s a camp, so like, you know, they’re, they’re prioritizing as much space that feels natural and i- and is not a parking lot as possible.
So, you know, y- As staff members, we were encouraged to get these, these, you know, uh, oftentimes suburban, uh, uh, parents to park their cars as close as possible to the, the other car that was already right there. And I… It, it was… It definitely wasn’t my favorite job at camp, but it, it was a little power trip where I could just be like, “No, you can do it. You can get three inches closer,” like “And you are not gonna leave this parking lot until you c- until you have parked as close as I think that you can.”
[00:43:07] Henry: I love that. That’s great. That’s great. Yeah. Y- you know, there, there’s a… So somebody asked me recently about how, um, how bigger cars were changing, uh, the way that people parked, and it was changing the geometry of, of parking garages.
And I think there’s something, there’s something to that, right? That, you know, um, if everybody drives a, an SUV and a pickup truck, then you are gonna have different standards for, um, what constitutes parking availability. And, um, especially in a situation where you have people, like, driving downtown, like, I do, I do feel a little, just a tiny bit bad for, for those folks because, um, it is, it can be quite difficult to park a, a very large car, uh, on a normal sized parking space.
[00:43:50] Ian: Yeah. I… May- maybe I’m a masochist though because, like, I also have been on the other end of that equation where, like, uh, I used to, uh, be the, the, the coach for a robotics team, for a high school robotics team. And so, like, you know, during the tournament, we had to drive… We borrowed a 15-passenger van to transport the, the robot to the location where the tournament was, which was on the U of M campus.
And then, you know, I left the rest of the team to, like, go and set up while I had to find a parking spot for this 15-passenger van, you know. And, uh, I don’t know, I, it… I, I f- have a little bit of a point of pride of, like, how tight of a space I can park a 15-passenger van is. It’s, it’s a, it’s a fun challenge to me.
[00:44:39] Henry: And but, yeah, just to, just to put a, put a, a point on it, the movie that you were talking about, um, Park- the, I think it’s called The Parking Lot movie.
[00:44:48] Ian: Mm.
[00:44:48] Henry: And it’s actually a, a very appealing and entertaining film, um, even for people who are not interested in parking as an urban design topic, and it doesn’t really actually touch on that at all.
It’s really about, as you were saying, the kind of, um, social relationships that govern, um, parking as a, as a transaction in a, in a college town. Charlottesville where, where, you know, there’s… You got, you know, a bunch of basically, like, you know, snooty, snooty preppy, um, parents of UVA s- kids driving in in their fancy SUVs and kind of, um- Engaging, as you say, in this kind of like social conflict with these beatnik parking lot attendants.
[00:45:27] Parker: Well, um, speaking of entertaining and interesting, uh, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you a chance to talk about the book that you have upcoming, Under Construction. Um, do you wanna talk a little bit about that? As, I mean, this is a book club. It’s, it’s another book.
[00:45:42] Henry: Yeah, sure. I’ll, I’ll give a little plug.
Um, uh, it’s not done, so, um, you know, maybe we’ll have to come back and talk about it a bit.
[00:45:48] Parker: Which is really funny that it, that looking at your website that it, it’s not done and it’s, uh, the first line is provisionally titled Under Construction.
[00:45:58] Henry: Yes. Well, I, yeah, we don’t know what it’s called yet either, so, um, but I can tell you what it’s about.
And what it’s about is the, um, why it’s, why it’s, why it’s hard to build buildings. And so the hope is that by, um, I’m following the construction of an apartment building, and I’m hoping that, uh, you know, this’ll kind of illuminate that every step of the way. And so obviously parking is part of that, um, but so is permitting and insurance and, um, dealing with the quality of the soil and the cost of materials and, um, finding, you know, who’s gonna, who’s gonna do which job on the site, um, and getting money from a bank and getting money from investors and, and all that stuff.
And so I’m hoping that for people who are interested in abundance and why it is hard to have a bunch of, you know, terrific family size soundproof, um, apartments in, in, in a major city, um, this will, uh, sort of kind of, uh, go into detail on, uh, on, on some of the things that, that, that, that make things, um, the way they are.
So yeah, um, stay tuned.
[00:47:10] Parker: Wonderful.
[00:47:11] Henry: Um- And if folks, and I should add, yeah, that if folks wanna follow along with that, um, I have a newsletter that I send out, which you can, um, subscribe to on my website and, uh, I will keep folks posted about that. But again, um, don’t hold your breath.
[00:47:26] Parker: Um, but not to jump around topics like too randomly, but going back to like the size of cars, uh, you know, finding parking spaces and stuff like that, I…
The, the two things that come to mind for that is when my wife’s dad came and visited to help her, uh, when she was first moving in with me, he brought his pickup from rural Wisconsin and then parked it at the Mall of America parking lot, which has ample parking, but he was still complaining about how his pickup really didn’t fit great into one of the parking spots.
And we’re like, “You brought a dually into an urban area. I don’t know what you’re expecting.” But then on the other end of things is that we have a Nissan Versa Note, which for anyone who doesn’t know, it’s kind of a small car. It’s not like itty bitty like a, uh, smart car, but it’s r- pretty, it’s pretty small in comparison to like sedans and stuff like that.
Um, but then also last week we were in Rome and the amount of like very, very little cars, very minimal things, uh, like the Citroen Ami, which is, uh, basically a golf cart that’s more street legal, uh, and ca- cars of that sort of size that we saw there. And like Rome doesn’t seem to be that, like anywhere near the kind of bikeability sort of, or uh, you know, public transit sort of thing that, you know, Paris or Amsterdam might be.
But the ease of getting around in a place like that when you still are building it for the kind of density that can sustain stuff like that. Like, it didn’t seem like parking those kinds of cars was that difficult in a space like that when you’re actually building cars closer to a human scale. I didn’t really have a point I was going with all that.
That was just kind of a ramble.
[00:49:10] Henry: No, that, that, that sounds right to me. I think, you know, and you- if you’ve ever driven a … If you’ve ever rented a car, if you’ve ever tried to drive a, a, you know, a large SUV into a European parking garage that was built in the 1960s or something like that, you’re, you’re in for a fun experience.
Try go, go around those little like, uh, you know, spiral curves getting in and out of there. Um, uh, so.
[00:49:40] Ian: And I, I think that is kind of a, like, that does launch us into the conversation of like, okay, what … Like, what’s the next step in terms of like managing public curbside? What is its purpose, right? How are we gonna utilize it?
And I feel like, like in the Twin Cities, we’re kind of setting ourselves up in, um, like a good situation where we have this municipally owned car share, right, Evie, which like we’re using this opportunity also to build out, uh, a, a, a, an electronic vehicle charging system, right? So there’s like, you know, I mean, they’re nowhere near ubiquitous but like, you know, you’ll be- you’ll pass by these charging stations that are on the curbside.
And, um, if we can, you know, shift into a scenario where it’s like, okay, utilizing public curbside space for parking publicly owned cars that, you know, anybody can sign up to be a member of this system and, you know, rent the car for a short term, you know? Like, that seems like it’s a more forward thinking, um, you know, and, and kind of brings us closer to a scenario where we don’t have to contend as much with like allowing people to store their private property long-term because it’s, it’s more short-term storage of a public amenity.
[00:51:12] Henry: Yeah. Well, I’m glad you mentioned that. I, I think when I started looking into this topic, it was kind of the golden age of people being optimistic about car share, right? Like, this was the, the time when Car2Go and Zipcar- Yeah … were occupying these city curbs in all these different cities. And then my sense of what happened is basically that there was this, a combination of, you know, maybe they slightly underestimated what the real costs were, but then also at the same time, there was this venture, um, backed subsidy for Uber and Lyft that meant so that, like, if you wanted to go to the grocery store, it was just cheaper to get somebody to drive you there and then get somebody to drive you back than it was to just actually rent a car for 45 minutes or an hour.
And so obviously, that was not gonna be a- an environment in which they could succeed. Now, if they were trying to do this now, now that, uh, it seems like every time you take an Uber, it’s like, you know, twice as expensive as it was, um, five years ago, maybe they’d have more success. And so I think I, I have heard from even developers that, like, there’s maybe optimism about car share at a micro scale.
So, like, one of the problems was, like, do you really ch- are you really comfortable making this your main mode of getting around if it’s a vehicle that you’re sharing with all these people you don’t know? Well, maybe not, but what if it’s a vehicle that you’re sharing with, like, a few other families in your apartment building?
Does that make it more palatable? Um-
[00:52:36] Parker: Mm.
[00:52:37] Henry: And so I feel like maybe there’s, maybe there’s, uh, room for that model to help people, if not, you know, transition to, to being a car-free household, at least say, like, “Okay, well maybe we can get by with a smaller car because on the days when we need our big car, we’ve got this thing available.”
[00:52:54] Ian: Yeah.
[00:52:54] Henry: Or, “On the days where we need the second car or third car, we’ve got this one available.” Um, and then the other piece of that is, like, the EV charging component, which I think is really important, and that was less of an issue when I was working on the book, but I’ve since talked to a lot of developers about the challenges of providing, um, electric vehicle charging inside multi-family buildings, inside gar- like, indoor garages.
And, um, I think it’s something that no one has quite figured out what the perfect model is supposed to look like, especially for condos where each parking space tends to be deeded to a particular unit.
[00:53:27] Ian: Mm.
[00:53:27] Henry: So it’s a lot harder to have, like, three spots that are just the electric spots that can be shared and people can rotate through.
Um, so you know, I think it remains to be seen how that, how that shakes out. But, um, certainly, you know, making sure that charging is available for people who do not have home garages seems like an important public policy goal.
[00:53:46] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think, I think one of the keys to, like, a successful kind of car share system is, is, like, publicly owned.
You know, ’cause like you said, venture-backed, venture capital-backed things, like, they come and go. Um, it’s kind of a, the flip side of the coin of, like, Chicago’s big, uh, uh, mistake with, with selling off all of their curbside, uh, you know, to the, to the company that’s running the meters now. Um, you know, and, and I feel like if we…
And this, maybe this is my, like, my Minnesota values, uh, coming forth as well. Like, I, I tend to prefer things that are, like, publicly owned and that, that is accountable to all of us in a democracy that, you know, we all get to shape. Um, but yeah. There’s, there’s no, like, there’s no danger of Evie suddenly, like, going out of business, uh, because it’s, it, all, everything is owned by the cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.
Mm-hmm.
[00:54:48] Henry: Yeah. That’s awesome. I mean, yeah, and I think to me it’s, ownership is part of it, and the other part is, like, who’s using it, and, like, m- maybe the micro, maybe a more micro local scale is- Mm-hmm … the way to, to get this model to perpetuate, right? Um, you know, in the same way that, like, you have, like, tool banks and, and things that people can share between, between different family units in a way that feels acceptable and, and, and normal. Um, this could be like that.
[00:55:18] Ian: There you go. Man, if I had a nickel for every time that the access economy has come up during our book club episodes, I’d have 10 cents, but it is weird that it happened twice.
I imagined that we were gonna talk about Chicago a lot more, but I managed to squeeze it in there.
[00:55:37] Parker: Cool. It is, it is wild what happened in Chicago, and it’s like I’ve heard… Last I heard, like they, you know, leveraged something to make the situation slightly better, but it’s not like a good situation still, and it probably won’t be for a very long time until someone actually like really flexes, uh, municipal power if they can.
Right.
[00:55:58] Henry: Well, the– I think with the most recent development, well, maybe not the most recent, but a few months ago the city did apparently make an offer to try and buy back these 35,000 meters they had sold or, or, or long-term leased to, uh, to a bunch of investors, uh, in 2009. Uh, and I guess the, the n- the news was that the city’s bid was in the billions of dollars.
Um, and, uh, the city did not win that bid, or, or maybe they didn’t even go through with making the offer. Um, but I thought that, that was interesting. And obviously the ownership change, you know, even if the city doesn’t take control, I think an ownership change does provide an opportunity for them to kind of try to set some new ground rules about how they’re gonna- Renegotiate terms you know, deal with the situation. Yeah.
[00:56:47] Ian: And at the very least, they have provided an example for the rest of us to point to when, if and when our municipal leaders, you know, try to go off the deep end. Mm-hmm.
[00:56:59] Henry: Somebody had to do it, I guess. It’s just a shame that it was a city with, uh, where, where, you know, just a city with so much potential- Right, you could fit its curbs in, in a pathway. Mm-hmm. Um, but, uh, you know, it’s only 75 years, and, uh- … we, we’re now through, um, 17 of them, so. Yay, yay.
[00:57:19] Parker: Just around the corner.
[00:57:23] Henry: Within my lifetime, if I’m lucky, um, Chicago will have publicly-owned parking meters again.
[00:57:28] Parker: Hooray. But we will have more book club episodes in that time for sure, and, um, I’m thinking based on a recommendation from a friend of ours that, uh, Transportation and the Shape of Cities should be our next book.
[00:57:45] Ian: Oh, yeah.
[00:57:46] Parker: Do you have any strong thoughts on that, Ian?
[00:57:47] Ian: Was that what… Did Regina recommend that one?
[00:57:50] Parker: Mel.
[00:57:50] Ian: Mel recommended that one? Nice.
[00:57:52] Parker: Who recently had their first article published on Streets.mn. Go read it.
[00:57:55] Ian: Yay!
[00:57:55] Parker: I think that’s about all. Henry, do you have anything else you’d like to plug, anything you’d like to mention?
[00:58:03] Henry: No, this has been a great discussion. Thanks for having me on.
[00:58:05] Parker: Thank you for being on here. It was a pleasure having you.
[00:58:08] Ian: And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Streets.mn podcast. The show is released under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial, non-derivative license. So feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it and you are not profiting from it.
The music in this episode is by Erik Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was produced and edited by Parker Seaman, AKA Strongthany, was transcribed by Stina Neel, and was hosted by me, Ian R. Buck. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.mn podcast, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
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Until next time, take care