Slate reporter Henry Grabar, who wrote the book"Paved Paradise How Parking Explains the World," however said that that piece of concrete or a spot inside a garage has wide ranging impacts on the environment, health, and even policy.ABC NEWS LIVE: All right. Right off the top, people are going to say, why did you write a book about parking? Why should it matter to us?
GRABAR: Well, because we live in a country where almost all of us have to drive almost all of the time to get wherever we want to go. So when I say a parking spot is the link between driving and life itself, what I mean is you can't do whatever you set you set out to do in the car until you can park. You can't get out of the car until you can find a parking space. So, of course, parking functions as a kind of third rail in American politics.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Explain to us the idea of parking minimums and how that determines who gets or I should say, which buildings get built and where. But what we've seen in the United States, in places that have begun to reform these policies, is that there are builders who have decided that, in fact, many people would actually prefer to pay less in rent and figure out the parking situation themselves.