4 ms·

You know what would be 10x better for society? Not have a society where half of every city is compromised of parking lots. The car and parking lots problem is

You know what would be 10x better for society? Not have a society where half of every city is compromised of parking lots. The car and parking lots problem is a huge part issue in the US in particular. Not only is the whole concept incredibly bad environmentally, in terms of CO2 of course, but also emissions and other problems like cities being hotter and causing water management issues. These parking lots are also a huge economic problem a symptom of the reason why so many towns are functionally broke. Encouraging cheap building for box stores or fast food restaurants with huge parking lots represents and incredibly uneconomic proposition and is losing cities money. Lots of infrastructure cost for very little in terms of property tax. Not to mention that such a development pattern makes city centers less attractive, and that is exactly the place where cities could be making actual money. Often is actually the poorer denser areas of the city that financially support the sprawl of the richer part of the city. So instead of plastering solar panels all over parking-lots ever effort should be made to eliminate the parking lots themselves. Infill development has to be done, and the city needs to support it with by relaxing their often borderline sociopathic zoning orders (along with a host of other harmful regulation). Changing the development pattern would save far more energy then plastering parking lots with solar panels will ever do. And not only will it help for the environment, things like the housing crisis in the Bay Area (and other places could be solved or at least massively impacted). Talking all the under utilized commercial zone property in the Bay Area and zoning it for mixed-use could potentially add 1000000s of housing units in the 'missing middle' segment. See this talk on the Bay Area by City designer Peter Calthorpe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUtdFbK4YG4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUtdFbK4YG4 The organization 'Strong Towns' has made this one of its central issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em7nqDqQ8oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em7nqDqQ8oM For some more details on the economics Joe Minicozzi: The Cash Flow of Urbanism:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFC_Q4WQKVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFC_Q4WQKVk So what I end up with is that inside of cities you shouldn't have parking lots hardly at all, and outside of the urban environment you might as well just put them onto some empty space. Putting solar panels on parking lots will just make those parking lots an even more persistent and harder to remove in the future. So remove the parking lot, don't buy the solar panels, invest that money in a trolley bus instead. It will be better for the environment and the city.

euroderf 4y ago
"Parking lot operators, the choice is yours: build solar over it or build a building over it. Fill'er up."
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
A lot of parking lots in dense cities are just property in reserve to be redeveloped. They were built 30-40 years ago and redevelopment will surely go with a parking garage because the land is too valuable to be used that way. Developers then must make decisions to redevelop (which is often limited based on finite construction workers, planners, and so on, and they are also waiting for the best opportunity, alignment with other plans in the area, etc…). No, they aren’t going to invest in solar covering for the parking lots because they won’t be around for much longer.
- enragedcacti 4y ago
  Absolutely. This is also true for a lot of American blight like run down strip malls in otherwise economically healthy communities. One partial solution is to switch to a Land Value Tax so that the tax structure incentivizes using land for the best use as soon as possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    An LVT won't necessarily lead to the best outcome if plan alignment and build resources aren't considered. Say you are waiting to acquire more land before you can put a good plan into action, or are waiting for transit infrastructure or a bunch of other things that must be considered. But LVTs do prevent just squatting and speculating more than property taxes do.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      If there is no transit yet your land price will be much lower. If small land passels are less valuable then potentially that is also gone impact land price.

euroderf 4y ago

"Parking lot operators, the choice is yours: build solar over it or build a building over it. Fill'er up."

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

A lot of parking lots in dense cities are just property in reserve to be redeveloped. They were built 30-40 years ago and redevelopment will surely go with a parking garage because the land is too valuable to be used that way. Developers then must make decisions to redevelop (which is often limited based on finite construction workers, planners, and so on, and they are also waiting for the best opportunity, alignment with other plans in the area, etc…). No, they aren’t going to invest in solar covering for the parking lots because they won’t be around for much longer.

enragedcacti 4y ago
Absolutely. This is also true for a lot of American blight like run down strip malls in otherwise economically healthy communities. One partial solution is to switch to a Land Value Tax so that the tax structure incentivizes using land for the best use as soon as possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  An LVT won't necessarily lead to the best outcome if plan alignment and build resources aren't considered. Say you are waiting to acquire more land before you can put a good plan into action, or are waiting for transit infrastructure or a bunch of other things that must be considered. But LVTs do prevent just squatting and speculating more than property taxes do.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    If there is no transit yet your land price will be much lower. If small land passels are less valuable then potentially that is also gone impact land price.