Don Shoup, I Love You

Sometimes you read an article and you just want to quote the whole thing. This is one of those articles, despite the dry-sounding yet hyperbolic title: Parking reform will save the city by Don Shoup.

Since I can't quote the whole thing, let me give some generous helpings.

America is a free country, and many people seem to think that means parking should be free... Parking is free, however, only because everything else is more expensive.

A recent study found that the parking spaces required for shopping centers in Los Angeles increase the cost of building a shopping center by 67 percent if the parking is...aboveground...and by 93 percent if the parking is underground. Retailers pass this high cost on to all shoppers, regardless of how they travel. People who cannot afford a car pay more for their groceries so richer people can park free...

That’s true for housing, too. Small, spartan apartments cost less to build than large, luxury apartments, but their parking spaces cost the same. Because many cities require the same number of spaces for every apartment..., ...parking disproportionately increases the cost of low-income housing. One study found that [parking raises] housing costs by 13 percent for families without cars.

Indeed, a single parking space can cost more than the net worth of many U.S. households. One study found that in 2015 the average construction cost (excluding land cost) for parking structures was about $24,000 per space for aboveground parking and $34,000 per space for underground parking. By comparison, the U.S. Census of Wealth and Asset Ownership in 2015 found that the median net worth (the value of assets minus debts) was $110,500 for white households, $19,990 for Hispanic households and $12,780 for African American households. One space in a parking structure, therefore, costs more than the entire net worth of more than half of all Hispanic and black households in the country.

This mandate to provide homes for automobiles has devoured vast amounts of land. Parking lots typically have about 330 square feet per space. Because there are at least three off-street parking spaces per car in the United States, there are at least 990 square feet of off-street parking space per car. In comparison, there are about 800 square feet of housing space per person in the United States. The area of off-street parking per car is thus larger than the area of housing per human.

That was the section that I really wanted to quote, but these two paragraphs from farther on also sprang out at me because they get at the psychology of parking as policy:

Parking clouds people’s minds, shifting analytic faculties to a low level. Rational people quickly become emotional; staunch conservatives turn into ardent communists. Thinking about parking seems to take place in the reptilian cortex, the primitive part of the brain said to govern behavior like aggression, territoriality, and ritual display...

Some strongly support market prices—except for parking. Some strongly oppose subsidies—except for parking. Some abhor planning regulations—except for parking. Some insist on rigorous data collection and statistical tests—except for parking.... If drivers paid the full cost of their parking, it would seem too expensive, so we expect someone else to pay for it.

My hypothesis is that in this culture, many of us have learned/been taught that our cars are extensions of our bodies. So we don't even think about the fact that they are not our bodies but big hunks of metal, and that they take up a lot of space. When we arrive somewhere in a car, we assume there is space for us, our bodies, and our cars are just an extension of our bodies so they must automatically also be welcome.

If we're going to shop or visit somewhere that it's free to enter, by this logic we "should" also be able to store our car for free. Maybe if we're paying a bunch of money to take our body into a space (like the theater), we mind paying for parking less. I think that's been true in my personal experience.

It's not logical, but I think that's what's happening. The research on bumper stickers and aggression would appear to support this body-extension idea.