WELCOME TO PARKING PUBLIC

back to the main office

Where shall they park? The answer became clear as more and more municipalities, from Los Angeles to smaller centers, voted for city-funded open lots. At mid-decade, Andrew Mellon, secretary of the treasury, told Colliers magazine that he would like to move the Washington Monument for more parking lots.
A Brief History of Parking: The Life and After-life of Paving the Planet, Jane Holtz Kay, Architecture Magazine, February 2001

Parking Public Tourists looking at a parking lot

About Parking Public

Parking Public is a research initiative documenting specific histories of public parking development as it relates to the more general ideology of utopian capitalism.
The Travel Office has been at work studying the changing context of parking in U.S. cities and towns, producing guided and self-guided tours to better understand how parking fits into our desires and frustrations for livable spaces.
Currently, we are looking at the disappearance of surface parking lots that seeems to be taking place across the country, especially in cities and towns with urban centers.

To date, we have conducted guided tours in Brooklyn (NY), Champaign (IL), Hollywood (CA) and Downtown Los Angeles. These tours give Parking Public participants up close experiences with the spaces of public parking. Our goal with the tours is to historicize parking within the larger ideology of automobility and what Richard Davies has called an "Age of Asphalt."

Tour Itineraries & Slide Shows

Brooklyn, NY (2006)
Champaign, Illinois (2007 updates coming soon)
Hollywood, CA (2007)
Downtown Los Angeles (2005)
Photo Archive (Flickr)

Video Tours

Parking Public: A Tour Into the Storage of Utopia video [on archive.org]

Order a DVD with PayPal [$10USD includes shipping in the US, $25 for orders outside the US]:

* VIDEO ERRATA: The Travel Office mistakenly spelled Dr. John Jakle's name as "John Jackle". We offer our most sincere apologies for the error, and will correct with the next production.