Author Talk: Henry Grabar and 'Paved Paradise' (NWL)

In Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, author Henry Grabar outlines how parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America. Since the advent of the car, we have deformed our cities in a quest for car storage, and as a result, much of the nation’s most valuable real estate is now devoted to empty vehicles. Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, traffic patterns and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, and the overall quality of public space. Is this really the best use of our finite resources? In a beguiling and absurdly hilarious mix of history, politics, and reportage, Grabar brilliantly surveys the nation’s parking crisis, revealing how the compulsion for car storage has exacerbated some of our most acute problems— from housing affordability to the accelerating global climate disaster—and, ultimately, how we can free our cities from park­ing’s cruel yoke.

Henry Grabar is a journalist and author who writes about cities. Since 2016 he has been a staff writer at Slate where he writes the Metropolis column, with a focus on housing, transportation, and the environment.

Registration required. Registration opens one month before the program at 7:00pm.

This event is hosted in partnership with Bike West Hartford.