IN the final week of 2023, I joined over a thousand members of the Ateneo community in signing an open letter to Ateneo President Bobby Yap, S.J. opposing the university's plan to convert green open space into more car parking (removing 82 trees, considered invasive species, for an additional 56 car slots). Experience already tells us that spending precious funds to create additional parking spaces will be wasteful, harmful and without positive impact.

In the last century, automobiles were viewed as providing maximum mobility and freedom, as long as there were good roads in all directions and plentiful parking at every destination. The conventional wisdom was that having cheap or free parking everywhere was a good thing and that more parking was better than less.