Today, I talk to Grabar about why he became fascinated with parking policy, whether L.A. can pull off a car-free Summer Olympics in 2028 and how the current White House administration is affecting the future of American transportation. I also share some of my other favorite books about transportation and urban planning before checking out the latest news in the book world.<\/p>\n
\u270d\ufe0f Author Chat<\/p>\n
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
You cover various urban issues for Slate. Was there a book that inspired your interest in these topics?<\/b><\/p>\n
The first thing I read about city planning that made me feel like this was a real subject of inquiry and study was Jane Jacobs\u2019 famous book, \u201cThe Death and Life of Great American Cities.\u201d<\/b><\/a> She even has a passage about parking lots as \u201cborder vacuums\u201d and the way that they kind of suck the life out of the surrounding streets. I read that when I was probably 17.<\/p>\n My direct inspiration for \u201cPaved Paradise\u201d<\/b><\/a> came more out of my reporting for Slate. It just seemed that beneath every single subject, there was a story about parking. Then I learned that many people in the field had already devoted their careers to studying parking. But that just meant there was a lot of interesting material there and a big gap between what professionals understood about the importance of parking and what the general public saw as its role.<\/p>\n \u2018Paved Paradise,\u2019 by Henry Grabar<\/p>\n (Penguin Press)<\/p>\n You mentioned Jane Jacobs\u2019 book. What are some of your lesser-known favorite books about transportation and urban planning?<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cFamily Properties\u201d by Beryl Satter<\/b><\/a> is a great book about race and housing in Chicago.<\/p>\n \u201cSaving America\u2019s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age\u201d<\/b><\/a> by Lizabeth Cullen is a biography, but it\u2019s also an urban renewal history that offers an interesting and nuanced perspective on the aims of the urban renewers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York\u201d<\/b> by Suleiman Osman holds many interesting lessons for our cities today.<\/p>\n As a famously sprawling city, L.A. features prominently in Paved Paradise. Since the book came out, city leaders have promoted the idea of a car-free Olympics. Do you think that\u2019s feasible?<\/b><\/p>\n That would be great. I hope they stick to that aim. It\u2019s going to be challenging, of course, but at the same time, if there\u2019s one thing we know about mega-events, it\u2019s just very, very difficult on a spatial level to get everybody where they\u2019re going if everyone arrives in a single-family vehicle.<\/p>\n I was at the Olympics in Paris last year, where I met [L.A. Mayor] Karen Bass very briefly. She seemed inspired by what was happening there. But it\u2019s hard to make a point-by-point comparison between Paris and Los Angeles because they\u2019re such different cities. At the same time, I do think planners in L.A. grasp this will be a much more fun event if it can summon some of that public-spiritedness that was on display in Paris, where the venues and the fans zones were all connected, rather than these isolated sites that are only accessed by car.<\/p>\n Henry Grabar\u2019s \u2018Paved Paradise\u2019 diagnoses the blight of parking.<\/p>\n (Lisa Larson-Walker)<\/p>\n Since you published your book, Donald Trump has returned to the White House. To what degree does the federal government <\/b>affect <\/b>how much, at a city level, we are able to chip away at our parking-dependent infrastructure?<\/b><\/p>\n The federal government is a huge player in the way our cities and streets look. There are a lot of city and county transportation departments wondering what will happen with these projects where money was allocated by Washington or they were expecting it to be allocated later.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s any silver lining to it, to accomplish their transportation goals, cities are going to have to do more with less and rethink some of the policy decisions they\u2019ve taken for granted that are in their control, like parking policy.<\/p>\n Is there another topic in this realm that you hope to turn into a book someday?<\/b><\/p>\n I\u2019m working on another book that follows the construction of a series of multifamily buildings from start to finish. By embedding with these projects as they make their way through the acquisition of the land, the design of the building, the zoning, the permitting, the financing and finally the construction, I\u2019ll be able to identify and illuminate some of the barriers to having enough housing that go beyond whether it is permitted by zoning, which I know is a hot topic in California.<\/p>\n I\u2019m trying to look across the country because this is increasingly a national problem, and there are variations from place to place in the issues that come into play.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udcda Book Recs<\/p>\n Now for some other books that have, to varying degrees, become my personality\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cCrossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet\u201d<\/b><\/a> explains how highways affect wildlife in ways both obvious (roadkill) and obscure (traffic noise pushing birds away from their habitats). Author Ben Goldfarb also highlights the creative solutions road ecologists are coming up with to help animals navigate our car-centric world.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve had an address your whole life, you\u2019ve probably never thought much about it. \u201cThe Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power\u201d<\/b><\/a> changed that for me. Author Deirdre Mask digs into the consequences of not having an address, the dark reasoning behind why we began numbering homes and so much more.<\/p>\n In \u201cRoad to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong <\/b>A<\/b>bout the Future of Transportation,\u201d<\/b><\/a> author Paris Marx pokes holes in many of the silver-bullet transportation solutions we have today, from autonomous vehicles to electric scooters, arguing these efforts often overlook the most vulnerable in our society and sometimes create more problems than they solve.<\/p>\n (Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)<\/p>\n \ud83d\udcf0 The Week(s) in Books President Biden at a campaign rally in Raleigh, N.C..<\/p>\n (Matt Kelley \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson\u2019s buzzy book about Joe Biden\u2019s diminished capacities and the associated cover-up is \u201creads like a Shakespearean drama on steroids,\u201d Leigh Haber writes in her review<\/a> of \u201cOriginal Sin: President Biden\u2019s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.\u201d<\/b><\/a> Times television and media business reporter Stephen Battaglio spoke with Tapper about the book. \u201cI have never experienced the ability to get behind the scenes in so many different rooms as for these recountings as I was for this book,\u201d the CNN anchor said<\/a>. \u201cI felt like people needed to get this off their chest. It was almost like they were unburdening themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Media mogul Barry Diller\u2019s memoir, \u201cWho Knew,\u201d<\/b><\/a> hit shelves this week. Here are the four biggest revelations. <\/a><\/p>\n In his new book, \u201cIs a River Alive?,\u201d<\/b><\/a> Robert Macfarlane questions the way we treat nature<\/a> by visiting three threatened rivers in different parts of the world.<\/p>\n With his 40th novel, \u201cNightshade,\u201d<\/b><\/a> out this week, author and former Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Connelly shared what keeps him writing at 68 years old.<\/a><\/p>\n In his new book, \u201cDiet, Drugs, and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight,\u201d<\/b><\/a> David A. Kessler argues Big Food has purposefully engineered ultraprocessed foods to be addictive. The Times spoke with Kessler<\/a>, a former FDA commissioner, about healthy long-term weight-loss strategies, guidelines for using GLP-1s safely, the body-positivity movement and improving lifespan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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