| Book Review | Environmental History, 10.2

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 10.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture. By John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004. xiii + 293 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $34.95.
"I have trained myself to see what others overlook." Thus Sherlock Holmes (in "A Case of Identity") accounted for his success. In Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture, John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle have done the same, yielding the first scholarly monograph on an overlooked but overwhelming force in American social geography.	1
Even in their dormant state, cars have been forceful agents of transformation. In Lots of Parking the authors (a cultural geographer and a historian) discuss immobile autos, especially in cities, where their spatial demands were most disruptive. Curb parking, open lots, and parking garages are treated in turn. Jakle and Sculle could not have chosen a worthier problem for investigation.	2
Yet the authors were surprisingly reluctant to put this intuitive masterstroke to use. They have uncovered a long-lost key, but they have not yet tried it in the lock. Though eager to prove the worth of their topic, Jakle and Sculle disavow any intent to fulfill its promise: "We do not pretend to bring to the topic special insight other than a willingness to synthesize and assess in essay form what previously has been written" (p. 16). Some readers may hesitate to press on.	. . .

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