Free parking encourages driving and parking lots make pedestrian and bike travel difficult. Alan Durning offers suggestions to help the nation save oil and reduce car use.
"Free parking, it turns out, is a major cause of the nation's unquenchable thirst for gasoline and automobile use. And this thirst drives an array of national concerns: not just rising fuel prices but also global climate change, dependence on foreign oil, tightening traffic snarls, relentless sprawl, and worsening urban smog...Subjecting parking to the free market so revered by the president can diminish the need for new oil wells-and safeguard the livability of so many communities."
Thanks to Abhijeet Chavan
FULL STORY: Land of the Free . . . Parking
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Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Nashville Planning Department
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
Journal of the American Planning Association