A lot of thought: The space of car parks and shopping centres in Australian cities

This paper explores the rise and significance of car parking in Australian cities, focusing on suburban shopping centres. The suburban shopping centre - mall - was meant by its creator Victor Gruen to recreate the pedestrian feel of European town centres, with cars kept outside. Suburban shopping malls are thus characterised by vast seas of parking dwarfing their destination buildings. This paper argues that the relationship between car parks and their urban surroundings appears deceptively simple, but closer inspection reveals complex interactions between car use, public policy and urban landscapes. Car parks are contradictory spaces, simultaneously of fundamental importance to enabling car travel, and widely neglected in terms of both planning and of thinking. Parking tends to be forgotten as soon as it is found, yet it is a significant feature of urban landscapes. In "Rethinking a Lot" Ben-Joseph observed that we "demand convenient parking everywhere we go, and then learn not to see the vast, unsightly spaces that result.&quot