Shoup then criticizes the Institute of Transportation Engineers for how it determines parking generation rates and the amount of parking needed for certain land uses, for extrapolating based on limited data, and for not accounting for factors like public transportation, which he argues leads to inaccurate rates.

He concludes that the methods used to determine these rates amount to "pseudoscience" because they appear scientific but are, in his view, often arbitrary.

He delves into a number of case studies from cities around the world and considers the costs that come with people spending time searching for parking, which he terms "cruising".

Reviewers generally found the book very comprehensive and practical for planners but also overly long and lacking in political solutions to parking's planning problems.

Yet the vast majority of the United States now possesses sufficient free off-street parking to make these solutions irrelevant for decades to come.