Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
danrodricks.com
Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
1–10 of 389 posts
Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
#2The book mentioned in this article (Paved Paradise) is eye-opening. I'm nearly done reading it and have a whole new perspective on the matter.
Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
#3I'd rather they put in an indigenous meadow. Trees are awesome, but so are open green spaces that maintain themselves.
Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
#4Strong Towns has called a good amount of attention to the mandatory parking requirements in many cities (and shockingly, many downtowns). Thankfully, it seems a fair number of cities are removing such restrictions, but hopefully it becomes more widespread.
In general I hope the US can urbanize, the older I get the more I realize it’s not really enjoyable living in this country. I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience.
(To be clear, I doubt most of the US will urbanize given the rural nature of a lot of it, but I hope at least bigger cities can move in that direction)
Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
#5How long does it take to break even on the carbon output of asphalt demolition and haul-away vs carbon input of optimal density trees planted in the same space?
Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
#6They (ought to) unpave the parking lot and put up a paradise!
More green spaces are good for cities.
Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
#7I'd rather they put in an indigenous meadow. Trees are awesome, but so are open green spaces that maintain themselves.
Why not both? Trees in the manner they're describing where it's just helping the forested area expand back out doesn't require human involvement either.
The selfish human reason to want trees as a natural heat regulator is I think alone worth the benefit in areas with lots of asphalt where people will be near.
Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
#8I'd rather they put in an indigenous meadow. Trees are awesome, but so are open green spaces that maintain themselves.
What herbivores are you going to deploy to allow the meadow to maintain itself? Going to fence them in or let them run wild in town?
In 99%+ of east coast US environments, grassland will become forest naturally (over time), even with the deer population as it is.
Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
#9No P&L, no cost/reward analysis, no numbers at all. Just emotional "omg need more green". Have the author ever torn down a single parking lot? Doesn't look like that to me. Why is this article even on HN at all?
Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees
#10If it’s public properties then yes please. If private then hippity hoppity…