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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums500 million reasons to rethink the parking lot
500 million reasons to rethink the parking lot
By Jared Green
A version of this story first appeared on The Dirt.
[font size="1"]Photo by Matt Johnson.[/font]
It doesnt matter whether you have a Prius or a Hummer, you have the same environmental impact. So argues MIT landscape architecture and planning professor Eran Ben-Joseph in his fascinating new book, ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking.
Whatever could he mean? Cars, on average, are immobile 95 percent of the time, taking up the same 9-by-18 foot paved rectangle. All of those paved spaces increase runoff into streams and wetlands, create heat islands, increase glare and light pollution, and shape the character of our cities.
To grasp the magnitude of the problem, consider that there are 500 million surface parking lots in the U.S. alone. In some cities, parking lots take up one-third of all land area, becoming the single most salient landscape feature of our built environment, Ben-Joseph writes.
But, to this day, he says, parking lots are considered a necessary evil; unsightly, but essential to the market success of most developments. So the time is definitely ripe to redesign the lot. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://grist.org/cities/500-million-reasons-to-rethink-the-parking-lot/
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500 million reasons to rethink the parking lot (Original Post)
marmar
Jun 2012
OP
HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)1. I just park on the sidewalk.
ret5hd
(20,499 posts)2. All parking lots should (at a minimum) be gravel...
or that new type of permeable concrete that lets water seep through. At the very least this would decrease run-off and allow more seepage into the groundwater.
BadgerKid
(4,553 posts)3. Add roofs to parking lots
to put up solar panels. Maybe allow some breaks to let trees grow through.
taterguy
(29,582 posts)4. Loved the sponsored ad by Toyota