The book “The High Cost of Free Parking,” by retired University of California professor Donald Shoup, demonstrates that parking can impose a significant social cost. Shoup argues that the car-centric city model is irrational, allocating increasingly more resources and space to a machine that goes unused 95% of the time.
Consequently, as a rule, nearly half of urban roadways are dedicated to storing this massive private asset, even though laws prohibit doing the same with any other personal belonging, such as tents or furniture. Within private spaces, cars also command a prominent place. In São Paulo, for example, parking spots accounted for nearly 50% of the private area of new residential buildings for several years.
