Based on the book written in 2005 by Donald Shoup, a research professor of urban planning at UCLA, the last educational video of Vox in association with Mobility Lab explores the consequences of the free parking requirements on our cities. After 60 years of urbanism revolving around the car, could we be able to rethink the policies and the purpose of underused parking lots?

To give an idea of the extent of parking spaces in America, two numbers often come to mind: they are 8 parking spots for every single car, covering as much as 30 percent of the cities. To sum up, parking lots across the country take about as much space as the state of West Virginia. As new kind of mobilities become more and more popular, such as car sharing, carpooling or bicycling, the need for parking requirements to change has become an important issue.

Expensive for cities and inhabitants, but also harmful to construction projects by being very restrictive, parkings still pretty much define the cities we live in. This video gives us some comprehension keys to apprehend this phenomenon and make a change.