Developers build office buildings using 250 square feet as an appropriate assignage for each person working in the building and 400 square feet as the minimum needed per automobile driven to work (Garreau, 1991, p. 466)! As long as parking could be accomplished by paving over fields instead of building high-rise parking structures, the ancillary cost of temporarily storing non-moving automobiles could be held to an affordable level, albeit at the cost of open space.

However, as consumption-oriented lifestyles required ever higher incomes (Rifkin; 1995; Schor, 1993), a tremendous increase in the number of commuting Americans had to be factored into these spatial equations. While the U.S. population increased 20% from 1970 to 1987, the percentage of automobiles sold doubled. In large part, these new automobiles allowed women involved in the "traditional" nuclear family (traditional only since the 1700s remember) and the multiple employed members of households to drive to different work locations, slowly defoliating the Garden of Eden.