The Parking Problem

Parking is expensive to create — up to $140,000 per space in an underground garage — but is low-cost or even free to use, which results in strange economic situations and irrational human behaviour.

After 36 years, Shoup’s writings — usually found in obscure journals — can be reduced to a single question: What if the free and abundant parking drivers crave is about the worst thing for the life of cities? That sounds like a prescription for having the door slammed in your face; Shoup knows this too well. Parking makes people nuts. “I truly believe that when men and women think about parking, their mental capacity reverts to the reptilian cortex of the brain,” he says. “How to get food, ritual display, territorial dominance — all these things are part of parking, and we’ve assigned it to the most primitive part of the brain that makes snap fight-or-flight decisions. Our mental capacities just bottom out when we talk about parking.”

Yeah this sounds about right, i’m going to stick to my bike.

(Source:Kottke) (Photo: Pigeon Hole Parking, Portland 1955)