Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World – A Conversation With Journalist Henry Grabar

The Lexington League of Women Voters, with generous support from Town Transportation Manager Susan Barrett and League member and transportation activist Pamela Lyons, is sponsoring an evening conversation with Henry Grabar, author of the recent book: Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. The event will be held at Estabrook Hall, in the Cary Memorial Building, at 6:00 pm on Thursday, April 25, 2024.

A staff writer at Slate’s online site, where he writes the Metropolis column on issues of housing, transportation, and the environment, Henry Grabar is currently a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2023 he published Paved Paradise, which he describes 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 which he also presents in the book.

This topic is particularly pertinent now, as Lexington looks to increase its housing stock, and will be dealing with issues of siting and services. The program is free and open to the public, and the League urges Lexington citizens to attend and join in the conversation. For more information, contact League Convener Margaret Coppe at mecoppe@gmail.com.