This is fresh air, I'm Terry Gross, drivers and passengers.

How much time have you wasted circling around and around searching for a parking spot?

Have you nearly gotten killed by someone competing for the same spot?

Are you outraged by prices charged by commercial parking garages?

Or maybe you live in a suburb that's been paved over for parking lots that are now half empty?

My guest Henry Grabar tells the stories behind these familiar problems in his new book.

But he also writes about larger issues that you might not be aware of.

He describes the book as in part the story of how we destroyed our cities

in search of more and more available parking and the people who helped make it so.

The mall builders, mobsters, police and the politicians, the garage magnates and community groups.

There are new alternatives in the works for dealing with traffic and parking.

He covers those two in his new book, Paved Paradise, how parking explains the world.

Grabar is a staff writer at Slate who covers housing, transportation and urban policy.

He was the editor of the book, The Future of Transportation.

Henry Grabar, welcome to Fresh Air. Before we get into the big issues,

can we trade an example or two of what we find most frustrating or weird about parking?

I'll start with, in the north, when you dig out a spot for your car so you can drive out

after a snowstorm, what people have often done in Philly is put a lawn chair or a trash can or

some piece of furniture in the parking spot to reserve it to say, this is mine. I dug this out and

I'm keeping it. I don't know if that happens in Brooklyn where you live, but where does that date

back to you? Do you know? Where does this tradition start? First, I thought this is just a Philly

thing and now I realize it's not. I've seen that practice in Chicago where I lived when I was

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