The means of operating at the urban scale in the contemporary metropolis requires a reassessment of forces too often considered beyond the grasp of the architect and too often ignored by the planner. In Houston, the difficulty of engaging the machinations of private development may constitute the greatest challenge to the project of urbanism. The redevelopment of Midtown Houston, a high-traffic corridor situated between Downtown and the Texas Medical Center, issues a prompt to create alternative tactics for reshaping the city. Midtown Parking (mtP) is a system of eleven hybridized parking garages that exploits the ever-present need for more parking as a means to intervene in the climate of private development, organize existing potentials, and influence the reshaping of the district. mtP offers a way of rethinking how urbanity might emerge from the confluence of an existing private development paradigm and a desire to make coherent and vital urban form.