Street parking doesn’t just take away space. “I think that’s our biggest mistake, to take some of the most valuable land on Earth and give it away, free, to cars.” “The curb lane is some of the most valuable land on Earth,” said Donald Shoup, a transportation professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. In New York City, the amount of road space reserved for parking is roughly the size of 12 Central Parks, according to one estimate, and most of the city’s 4m street parking spots are free. The US has an estimated 3.4 spaces for every car. T he street space occupied by parked cars may not seem like much, but it adds up.