Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Builders of stores, restaurants, houses, and apartments pay to build the parking and then pass that cost on to the rest of us in higher prices for everything else. If it’s so expensive to build and maintain parking, and the people who park there usually aren’t paying for it (consider the enormous lot of free parking at your nearest shopping mall), how did it get there? Since around 1951, most localities have required property developers to provide some minimum amount of parking whenever they build something. Shoup estimates that the total land and construction value of all parking in the United States is greater than the total value of all cars, and possibly all roads. A space in a parking structure costs about $125 a month to operate and maintain.

For starters, even a simple surface parking lot costs on the order of tens of thousands of dollars per space to build, and then you have to maintain it and pay property taxes for it. The High Cost of Free Parking shows that it’s anything but. If there’s one thing to take away from this book, it’s this: the next time you’re looking for a parking space and getting frustrated, don’t think, “We need more parking here.” Instead think, “there’s a parking shortage here because the price of parking is too low.” Because most parking is free, it leads to a shortage at best, and a “tragedy of the commons” at worst.īecause we don’t pay a fee to park on most of the car trips we take, we’ve been conditioned to think of parking as “free”.

Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter