Lauren Goode: Do you mean you personally or the collective you?
Gideon Lichfield: I mean, it’s always about me, isn’t it?
Lauren Goode: Naturally. [Chuckle]
Gideon Lichfield: So anyway, I cycle, I use public transport. I do not have a car.
Lauren Goode: But you do have a motorcycle.
Gideon Lichfield: Thanks for the reputation on the street, but I usually keep it in storage.
Lauren Goode: OK, so here’s why you should care about parking.
Gideon Lichfield: I’m listening.
Lauren Goode: This isn’t just about the future of parking, it’s about the future of cities. And you care about cities, right? You are a city person.
Gideon Lichfield: That’s true, that’s me. And I think we all care about the future of cities, especially after the pandemic, we’ve wondered what it’s going to be like as urban space changes.
Lauren Goode: Exactly, this is a theme that has been covered before in this show. And I think now that we’ve filtered back into the real world, the physical world, it’s hard not to notice how our use of space has changed.
Lauren Goode: I mean, to me, I think one of the most obvious signs of this when you walk through cities is those eateries or parks that have popped up on the streets outside of the restaurants.
Gideon Lichfield: I love that we call them “parklets,” as if we can’t let go of the idea that they’re also a form of parking.
Lauren Goode: Exactly, yes. And whether you call them a park or a shack or an extension of a restaurant probably depends on how you feel about the parking spaces they occupy.
Gideon Lichfield: Yeah, and then there’s the way we’ve seemingly decided that some streets can be closed to traffic so people can walk on them and enjoy the outdoors.
Lauren Goode: Yes, there are some good examples of that in San Francisco, right? JFK Drive and Golden Gate Park are now closed to cars, which I personally love. I cycle there a lot.
Gideon Lichfield: Okay, so what’s the connection with parking?
Lauren Goode: OK, so here’s the connection. Our guest today, Henry Grabar, believes that parking explains a lot about how we use space in our cities. He’s a writer for Slate Magazine, and this new book, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the Worldtells all about how we’ve built this parking infrastructure in cities to mirror the suburbs, and how that really informs a lot of other space uses in our inner city and maybe that’s not a good thing.
Gideon Lichfield: Okay, so what’s his argument?
Lauren Goode: Well, he says we should rethink the idea that parking has to be so plentiful because cities aren’t suburbs, so we shouldn’t treat them that way.
