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Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

danrodricks.com

11–20 of 389 posts

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#11
post #3

I'd rather they put in an indigenous meadow. Trees are awesome, but so are open green spaces that maintain themselves.

Meadows or trees would be nice, but I've noticed that underused parking lots tend to be common places to build restaurants and other retail. Not as great as trees or meadows but on the other hand I'd rather the new retail goes on parking lots rather than replacing currently existing trees & meadows.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#12
post #3

I'd rather they put in an indigenous meadow. Trees are awesome, but so are open green spaces that maintain themselves.

A lot of places would benefit from more housing, too, or new business, or almost anything really. A parking lot is about the worst option possible.

We look at a large section of a land and decide that we will destroy all life on it, pave over it with asphalt (so that even the rain cannot drain into the soil), all so that large vehicles can sit there unused. It really is the lowest opinion one can have on a piece of Earth.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#13
You could always put together a group and purchase the land from the current owners. Once you take possession, put the land in trust, tear it up and plant trees. You could potentially recover some costs by donating to the city but there is always a chance that they would decide to change the zoning in the future.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#14
I like cars and spend a decent amount of time keeping my cars looking pristine. I personally prefer having more than enough parking rather than just enough. Most of the efforts to improve walkability makes it impossible to find parking when you are driving in and forces you to park in dense areas where you either have to pay a fortune to park or park in dense areas where your car is likely to get dinged by some jerk who opens their door into your car.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#15
post #3

I'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.

I had big meadows in front and back of my house when I moved in 25 years ago. I let about the 50-100 feet out by the road naturalize over time; the rest is cut by a tractor about once a year. The section out by the road is forest, albeit immature, at this point.

There's far more forest in New England than there was 150 years or so ago.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#17

How 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?

I don't think it's fair to look at carbon output in isolation here. This would greatly help with a variety of issues such as mitigating urban heat islands, providing wildlife habitat, aiding pollinators, and just generally making the world we live in less hellish.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#18

I like cars and spend a decent amount of time keeping my cars looking pristine. I personally prefer having more than enough parking rather than just enough. Most of the efforts to improve walkability makes it impossible to find parking when you are driving in and forces you to park in dense areas where you either have to pay a fortune to park or park in dense areas where your car is likely to get dinged by some jerk…

> Most of the efforts to improve walkability makes it impossible to find parking when you are driving

Most of the efforts to improve driveability make it impossible to walk anywhere.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#19
post #4

Strong 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 h…

Fayetteville Arkansas was one of the first towns to remove the mandatory parking restrictions and a ton of abandoned downtown buildings quickly became restaurants. They were absolutely right.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#20
I'd like to see more solar covered parking lots. Bonus points for integrated EV charging stations. They would be great in the hotter parts of the country. How much fuel/energy is spent cooling cars back down after they have sat in the sun for an hour?
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