You Pay for Free Parking Even If You Never Drive

A supermarket offers free parking. But the asphalt outside still has to be built, insured, lit and maintained. The cost never disappeared. It simply moved inside the store.The next time you park outside a supermarket, you'll notice the empty spaces around the car — and know that they were paid for at the register.▌│▌│ ▌│ ▌▌│ ▌│▌ ▌│ ▌▌│▌ ▌│ ▌│▌│IN THIS EPISODE— How minimum parking requirements determine the size of a parking lot before the store is built— Why drivers, pedestrians and bus passengers all pay for supposedly free parking— How surveys of free suburban parking became laws that reproduced the demand they claimed to measureTHE NUMBER330 square feet — approximately 31 square metres of pavement and circulation space per parked car, Donald Shoup, 2005SOURCESDonald Shoup — The High Cost of Free Parking, 2005Michael Manville — Parking Requirements and Housing Development: Regulation and Reform in Los Angeles, 2013Daniel Baldwin Hess and Jeffrey Rehler — Minus Minimums: Development Response to the Removal of Minimum Parking Requirements in Buffalo, 2021▌│▌│ ▌│ ▌▌│ ▌│▌ ▌│ ▌▌│▌ ▌│ ▌│▌│Narration in this episode is AI-assisted.Research, writing and editorial judgment are human.Invisible Economics — The Systems Behind Everyday LifeNew episodes every other Tuesday.