Parking structures around the world

The feature story over at Slate.com is on parking garages around the world. It’s actually a fun slideshow essay they’ve got going through the history of parking structures. Apparently it all started on the corner of Temple St. in New Haven, a corner that’s two blocks down from where I live. That parking garage was built by Paul Rudolph in 1962, and was meant to revitalize New Haven’s notorious dilapidated downtown (it’s a fun place nowadays, I promise).

Anyways, I’ve never thought much of the parking garage whenever I pass it, guess I’m not much of a parking garage connoisseur. It’s described as “macho monumentalism–all brawny forms and structural muscle … ingenuity with concrete.” Hmm, all I really see are the bums who always seem to be hanging under the lights taking a smoke.

And from the archives, Slate also has a fun article about mechanized parking garages, worth a read.