BBC: "Is there a worldwide parking problem?"

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"A revolution is required in our attitude to car parking, according to the author of a new book. He claims we are adrift in a "sea of asphalt" and calls on architects to design car parks which are more aesthetically pleasing and have less environmental impact. 

"Eric Kuhne, who designed the award-winning car park at Bluewater shopping centre, just outside London, said there was no excuse for drab parking lots, which he described as 'insidious'."

"I grant him bloody,

Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,

Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin

That has a name -

Hammerson"

"Parking lots can occasionally be places of culture. In New York the Shakespeare in the Lot project puts on the bard's plays for free in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

"The project's artistic director, Hamilton Delancey, who has been involved for 11 years, and who is putting on 'The Merry Wives Of Windsor' and 'Coriolanus' this summer, said:

"We set out about 50 plastic seats and people bring their own chairs and blankets, and we usually get up to 250 for a performance.

"Sometimes it can quite get quite surreal. You could be staging 'Othello', and a driver will come back to pick up their car and there's an audience surrounding it.

But the actors will stop, step aside, everybody will move their chairs, the cars backs out, then the audience sits back down, the actor - still in character - carries on without missing a beat."