Actually, the reason WalMart has free parking is because it is always placed far from where people live so everyone has to drive there, and because everybody ha

Actually, the reason WalMart has free parking is because it is always placed far from where people live so everyone has to drive there, and because everybody has to drive they all have to park eventually. Then, to accommodate all this parking cheaply, the stores will have to be placed on cheap land which is far away from residential areas and you get a vicious cycle... The notion that parking is somehow a necessity is only really because of crappy public transit and sprawling cities. In a dense city with good transit options, point-to-point driving wouldn't even be among the top options for getting places to begin with.