Photo by Roey Ahram, used under Creative Commons licensing. Photo by Roey Ahram, used under Creative Commons licensing.

Everyone seems to have strong feelings about parking, no matter how they get around town. Whether you're circling the block four times to try to find a spot or hiking across a desert of empty asphalt, it seems like parking slots aren't always in the right place at the right time. Richard Willson tackles this dilemma in his book Parking Reform Made Easy and its companion volume coming this summer, Parking Management for Smart Growth. In the excerpt below, he explains how we got into our current dilemma.