When the automobile was first introduced, few Americans predicted its
fundamental impact, not only on how people would travel, but on the
American landscape itself. Instead of reducing the amount of wheeled
transport on public roads, the advent of mass-produced cars caused
congestion, at the curb and in the right-of-way, from small midwestern
farm towns to New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles.
Lots of Parking examines a neglected aspect of this rise of the
automobile: the impact on America not of cars in motion but of cars at
rest. While most studies have tended to focus on highway construction
and engineering improvements to accommodate increasing flow and the
desire for speed, John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle examine a
fundamental feature of the urban, and suburban, scene--the parking lot.
Their lively and exhaustive exploration traces the history of parking
from the curbside to the rise of public and commercial parking lots and
garages and the concomitant demolition of the old pedestrian-oriented
urban infrastructure. In an accessible style enhanced by a range of
interesting and unusual illustrations, Jakle and Sculle discuss the role
of parking in downtown revitalization efforts and, by contrast, its role
in the promotion of outlying suburban shopping districts and its
incorporation into our neighborhoods and residences.
Like Jakle and Sculle's earlier works on car culture, Lots of Parking
will delight and fascinate professional planners, landscape designers,
geographers, environmental historians, and interested citizens alike.
Published in association with the Center for American Places
