Book Review: Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar
Myopic At Best Polemic. This is a book that starts with a personal preference premise - that cars are evil and parking is ruining urban cores - and proceeds to write a 200+ page book covering what could more rightly be a flyer.
It raises some interesting points here and there, enough for those willing to endure an hours long struggle session that is effectively laying your head on an anvil and allowing the blacksmith to hammer on your head repeatedly to learn the same maybe half dozen points over and over and over... and over and over and over... and over and over and over.
But to get into some objective-ish flaws apparent even in the Audible version I read, where I don't have access to the depth of any bibliography that may have been included in the text forms of this book:
One star is deducted for the dripping elitism. Grabar thinks he knows better than everyone else - even those nominally on his side - and he is going to use that hammer and anvil to drive that point home incessantly.
One star is deducted for the complimentary yet separate problems of claiming parking explains "the world" while primarily focusing the entire narrative on the United States alone... while also citing "evidence" from places outside the United States to claim that they have any relevance at all to the situation inside the United States. Pick one, sir. Either show how these problems and what you view as solutions play out globally, or stick to evidence within the United States and adjust the title to reflect this more tailored focus.
One star is deducted for straight up shitty research - the myopia referenced in the title of this review. Grabar never once considers competing or even simply alternate theories, much less realities both philosophical and extremely practical about the issues he presents. Everything from private property rights (which he actively dismisses and even praises property thieves) to very real safety concerns on mass transit. Further muddying the picture - particularly in light of Anthony Fauci's diaries being released admittedly years after the publication of this book - is Grabar's high praise of the COVID "science" promulgated by Fibbing Fauci, which thus calls into question the reliability of literally every other "scientific" claim Grabar makes (as though this wasn't already an issue even with the related issues noted earlier in this very paragraph).
There is enough good here that those who had not previously considered these issues at any level will at least find things to look more closely into... but it is so mired in such utterly myopic and polemic bullshit that trusting this book for anything more than emergency toilet paper is likely trusting it entirely too much. Read it if you've never read anything on the topic at all... then go out and do even the modicum of more balanced research yourself that Grabar clearly never did.
Recommended. Barely.
This review of Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar was originally written on August 14, 2026.
