Parking Lots

With perhaps as many as 2 billion parking spaces in the US, planners and architects should "take seriously" the parking lot as an actual, useful public space.

Though much of its urban form requires a car to traverse, a few new projects in Miami are shifting the city away from its past of parking lot sprawl.

Cities plan to cut off individual parking garages is a gamble, says Josie Garthwaite in National Geographic -- yet making it impossible to park is one of the few yet most effective tools that reduces driving.

New parks -- even very small ones -- can have a major impact on the way cities and communities are revitalized, according to this post.

DJDave, aka David Wittman, spoofs L.A. culture and the politics of the parking lot in this clever video.

Beyond the fact that supplying lots of parking encourages driving, a new study quantifies the environmental impact of parking lot construction.

A meeting last week at the Regional Planning Commission attracted dozens of speakers angry with L.A. County's plans to change the zoning around the marina to allow new development of apartments and retail spaces.

A new Safeway in Washington, D.C. is breaking the mold in grocery design by tucking the parking away behind the entrance and putting the market upstairs in a 2-story building, with smaller shops for lease on the street.

Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute proposes renovating city parking lots into actual parks would go a long way to improving the air quality of cities.

This post from The Overhead Wire looks at the impact of parking lot sprawl in American downtowns -- and finds a striking resemblance between those downtowns and bomb-ravaged cities from World War Two.

Los Angeles explores the possibility of selling off parking garages to manage a budget crisis.

Steven Mouzon reflects on the huge investment a roadside reference like a Waffle House must make in infrastructure versus the relatively low expense for an inner-city restaurant.

Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron have designed a new parking garage for Miami that attempt to engage the public with a shockingly open-air design.

An exhibit currently at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. explains how the architecture and design of parking lots evolved, and why. Meanwhile, the Parking Show of Shows conference takes place nearby with a different take.

More than 100 trailers and RVs sit in a parking lot at Los Angeles International Airport, creating an odd community of airline pilots and mechanics.

Plans to build a Wal-Mart and parking lot near a historic Civil War battlefield has spurred a bi-partisan protest from Virginia's top officials.

A new parking garage opening in Ft. Worth is actually a full-scale public art project by artist/architect Christopher Janney. Janney's design includes a soundscape of Ft. Worth music and native animal sounds.

This film from Streetsblog looks at a community effort in Portland to remove pavement from unused parking lots.

An outreach counseling group in Santa Barbara, California, has worked with the city to set up 12 parking lots where people can sleep in their cars at night -- an act that is illegal on city streets.