Session 9 / Chicago Live Program: A Reimagining of the Parking Lot in the Pandemic Era

Henry Grabar
Staff Writer
Slate, New York City

The pandemic has prompted an instant architectural reckoning in the parking lot. As the low risk of outdoor transmission became common knowledge, restaurants, houses of worship, movie theaters, and civic institutions rushed to take advantage of whatever open space was available to them. Most of the time, that space was parking space.

The United States has between one and two billion parking spaces, with more square footage devoted to car storage than to housing. A growing movement of local activists, economists, and politicians have been advocating for a smarter approach to this vast, mispriced, and underused resource.

This presentation discusses the progression of COVID-era reclamation of on- and off-street parking, from the impromptu projects of April and May 2020 to the more permanent infrastructure that has emerged over the summer, including private initiatives like restaurants and retail and public ones like green space and bus or bicycle paths. On many streets, these changes represent the most fundamental change to public space since the arrival of the parked car a century ago.

How should cities respond to these new uses in the public realm? How do they ensure the shift of a public asset from one private user (a parked car) to another (an adjacent storefront) is equitable? And what if this period is just a dress rehearsal for the re-thinking of parking assets required by remote work and e-commerce?