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> More square footage is dedicated to parking each car than to housing each person. 9' by 18' (162 sq ft.) is on the large end of parking space sizes. A couple

> More square footage is dedicated to parking each car than to housing each person. 9' by 18' (162 sq ft.) is on the large end of parking space sizes. A couple living in a 400 sq ft. tiny house doesn't even make that true, and most houses aren't tiny houses. For more normal 2000 sq ft. houses, you'd need an average of more than 12 people living in each one to make it true.

afiori 3y ago
I suspect that they are counting the parking surface nationwide to living space surface nationwide, not just domestic parking. For example this would include all the parking spaces at schools, offices, walmarts, etc.
- josephcsible 3y ago
  So when you go to work, they count the parking space there towards the square footage for your car, but not your office there towards the square footage for you? And when you stay at a hotel, they're counting the hotel's parking space towards the square footage for your car but not the hotel room towards the square footage for you? It's unfair and absurd to only count the square footage for you where you live, but to count the square footage for your car everywhere you ever drive it to.
  - mym1990 3y ago
    That is the whole POINT. You don't pick up your house and move it every time you need to go to a grocery store(unless you live in your car, which many do), but that is exactly what you do with a vehicle. This means that the infrastructure needed to support the vehicle is actually massively more extensive than just the vehicle, leaving a footprint that is much bigger than just the car, and impacts almost all facets of day to day life.
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      > You don't pick up your house and move it every time you need to go to a grocery store You are to your house as your car is to your driveway. You don't dig up your driveway and bring it with you every time you drive somewhere.
      - mym1990 3y ago
        You just argued against yourself though, because in a theoretical sense that is exactly what you do. If you don't have a parking space available at the location you are going to, a "public driveway" so to speak, you are not able to leave the car there. Now you could make a similar point about short term living situations like hotels, but I would imagine that the number of people who regularly stay in hotels is much lower than the number of people who own and operate a vehicle regularly.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        The point is that it's not any different than the living space itself. If you go from home to work, you need an office to be in while you're there in addition to a parking space, and for that time both your home and the parking space at your home are empty. But they're counting the parking space at the office and not the office space there.
        orwin 3y ago
        I don't need a parking space at my office. Never needed one.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        So either you park your car at the train station, and then the train station needs a parking space for you and according to this math it still counts as another one even if it's outside the city. Or you live within walking distance of mass transit, which most people can't because there isn't enough relevant land zoned for that kind of high density development for everyone to live in even if they wanted to. But I'll do you one better. If you work from home you don't need the parking space or the office space.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      "This means that the infrastructure needed to support..." ... the offices, schools, stores, etc is much larger than just a house. All the heating cooling, plumbing, etc and it sits empty most of the time (and you have to walk/drive past those regardless of their parking infrastructure). I fully get the point they are making. The thing the grandparent was talking about is that the argument could just as easily apply to the building spaces themselves rather than only the parking. Given this and the host of other categorical differences in parking vs occupied structures does in my view make the comparison "absurd". In general, this article is using a lot of numbers to make arguments that are really emotionally based.
      - mym1990 3y ago
        Certainly the notion that parking could just be replaced by housing(or anything else) in the snap of a finger is a stretch. The initial idea of the American dream and the single family home almost has to lead to a reliance on cars, especially in the suburbs(or did the advent of the car lead to the single family home dream?). Anyways, my point is that the buildings are productive, whether it be a school or a store or a home, but a parking space less so. Many communities have been able to use mass transportation alongside infra for bicycles/mopeds/scooters to make living in a city/town very enjoyable(but this isn't really what the article is getting at).
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Not only that, the total nationwide is essentially meaningless because of how many parking spaces there are in suburban areas where zoning prohibits the land from being used for much else or rural areas where the land isn't that scarce. Converting parking spaces into bigger lawns doesn't get you any more housing.
    - shagmin 3y ago
      It's pretty marginal but there are a couple instances where I'm at that are slowly being addressed, where some really large, poorly located parking lots are making some areas more flood prone and holding up development in their vicinity.
  - bena 3y ago
    Even if you were to do that, parking has a larger footprint than habitation. Or whatever you want to call existing in a space. For example, if I go to Chipotle for lunch, I will go and park my car, go inside, get in line, order, blah. My car, and everyone else's car will take up 9x18 units. If it's busy, you could have a line 10 to 15 people deep. That's 1620 sq ft of parking for people who will be occupying about 360 sq ft on the inside. (Assuming 10 people all taking up a 6x6 block).
  - afiori 3y ago
    I feel that there is a categoric misunderstanding here: there is no "natural" conversion rate between "parking footage" and "abitable footage", the claim from the book is just saying "There are a lot of parking! More than you think! The parking surface is bigger than the abitable surface", it is about conveying a sense of scale not about "the ratio is 1.2 but should be 0.7". As you have pointed out it could also means "The car in your driveway has 11 theorethical empty parking spots built for it, maybe there is an overallocation of resources" Some relevant resource might be: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6... from Not Just Bikes based on research from Strongtowns
- stonedge 3y ago
  This is what the data is based on. I've read the book and it's totaling all square footage in the country devoted to parking lots vs. housing. Essentially after the math, each car has more than just one space allocated to it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
michael1999 3y ago
Not really. An F150 is 8' wide to the mirror, and most people like to open the door. And they are 17.5' long, and nobody likes to touch the wall with their nose. If anything that's an understatement of the space used. Unless you have valets/robots packing the cars into solid blocks, every single parking space needs a full driveway beside to enter/exit, and that driveway needs to be wide enough to accommodate the turning radius during parking. For the F150, that's another 150sqft or so.
- eropple 3y ago
  "Most people like to open the door" is a beautiful line.
  - iso1631 3y ago
    Some don't. Look at the iconic reveal of the Delorian in Back to the Future.
    - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
      *DeLorean
- josephcsible 3y ago
  I agree with you that 9'x18' is smaller than ideal. I just meant it's on the large side of what we actually have today.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Moreover, that's assuming that every car is a Ford F150. But what happens in practice is that the F150 gets parked next to a Toyota Corolla which is less than 6' wide and thereby has room to open the doors by extending them into the adjacent space.
  - michael1999 3y ago
    Not really if you include the driveway too. A parking spot without access in/out is useless. When an aisle has parking both sides, this space is shared, so only 50% allocated to each space. But if you ever see an aisle with parking on only one side, you might be surprised how much more room cars need to get in/out. Even with shared aisles, it is ~100sqft. 300sqft for a parking spot really is a bare minimum. And that's before you start adding up common spaces like ramps, etc.
thelastgallon 3y ago
US has 2 billion parking spots. A car also needs room to maneuver into the spot, this makes the space 2 - 3x than just the area required to park a car.
- josephcsible 3y ago
  But the maneuvering space for your driveway is the road, which was there anyway.
  - ajuc 3y ago
    Most of the road is only there because people use cars instead of public transport. Keep 2 lanes as necessary,the remaining lanes should be divided among the cars as wasted space caused by them.
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      > Most of the road is only there because people use cars instead of public transport. Buses need roads too, and train tracks are just as big as roads but less versatile.
      - rootusrootus 3y ago
        > Buses need roads too And delivery vehicles, emergency vehicles, etc. We certainly had roads before we had cars.
        goosedragons 3y ago
        Sure. Were they as wide? Do we need 4 lane stroads if most commuters moved to bicycles, public transit or walking?
        rootusrootus 3y ago
        There are considerably more people today than there were before cars, so it's hard to say how wide the roads would need to be if we could make bicycles, public transit, and walking a functional equivalent for cars.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
There are more than one parking spot per car. One at home, one at work, one at the grocery store, one at the cafe. Some of those are shared, but it is entirely believable that we have more paved parking than we have housing
- iso1631 3y ago
  https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parking-spaces-for-every-car-heres-how-cities-are-rethinking-that-land https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parki... "America has eight parking spaces for every car. Here’s how cities are rethinking that land" Wow.
  - afiori 3y ago
    It is important to note that car usage an extra parking are strongly correlated as any car is either parked or travelling. If you add more cars without adding at least 2 parking spaces per car you almost surely get less usage or cars stuck in traffic. Car infrastructure is very expensive, see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...
- josephcsible 3y ago
  If you're only counting the square footage of people's homes rather than of everywhere they go, then you should also only count the square footage of their driveways rather than of everywhere they park their cars.
  - afiori 3y ago
    This is only a fair comparison if you assume that cars are as important as people and deserve half of the space for everithing else in the world.
- NumberWangMan 3y ago
  Interestingly, one practical tactic for increasing walkability in cities is to focus on increasing the re-usability of parking. People who live in an apartment and drive to work don't need their parking space during the day, so sometimes you can have an apartment and an office share parking spaces, in the middle of a city. Obviously there's nowhere near 100% overlap, but if you can get to a situation where you only need 150% as much parking instead of of 200%, that's great.
seadan83 3y ago
Many building/land-use codes require one parking space per expected adult occupant. So we can multiply by two. Further, we are counting just parking at the residence, let alone the combined shared parking elsewhere. Plenty of roads has as much parking on either side as there is actual roadway
ChrisRackauckas 3y ago
You're missing big box stores like Walmart which each have tens of thousands of square feet of parking around them for every car which could potentially show up. Many times, these giant parking lots are mandated by law, so each grocery store has a parking lot, and each school has a parking lot. When you total it up, there are hundreds of places you could theoretically park your car, mostly mandated by law to exist. It makes all infrastructure bigger: you house is further from the store because you have to drive past a bunch of parking lots. If you go to a place that isn't driving dependent and you'll see that the main factor for "better walkability" is namely "places are a few miles closer because you don't have to walk through 20 parking lots to get there". It's pretty eye opening.
- giantg2 3y ago
  "If you go to a place that isn't driving dependent and you'll see that the main factor for "better walkability" is namely "places are a few miles closer because you don't have to walk through 20 parking lots to get there"." That's not really the main factor. I would say the main factor is medium to high density, mixed use areas that have business friendly regulations and/or wealthy residents/tourists. There aren't tons of large parking lots in west Philly, but I wouldn't give it a high walkability score given all the vacancies (where are you going to walk to?) and safety concerns (both in infrastructure and crime terms).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - afiori 3y ago
    The aneddotical example of when it can be the main factor is the famous Houston In The 70' photo: https://i.redd.it/rdh7zsqvz5q01.jpg https://i.redd.it/rdh7zsqvz5q01.jpg
    - giantg2 3y ago
      Still, not really. Even going with that picture, this is still a better description "medium to high density, mixed use areas that have business friendly regulations and/or wealthy residents/tourists.", as one could get rid of the parking lots, but that wouldn't make it necessarily better unless it's also mixed zoning (eg if those are all office buildings, you still have to drive to get to a restaurant, grocery, etc).
bena 3y ago
I have two parking spots that are essentially dedicated to my car. At work* and at home. I don't have to worry about parking at either of those spots. Ever. Everywhere I go out has parking. I need to pick something up at the hardware store and grocery store today. I'm not worried about the parking at either. Usually, there's plenty of empty spots at most locations I'll drive to. The few times I can't find a parking spot is around meal times at places with already limited parking. And I just remembered, I have a parking pass for a local stadium for games during that sport's season. That's another dedicated spot for my car. I believe right now, both stadiums have empty parking lots. I drive by a minor league baseball field every morning that has an empty lot. It's not just about the parking at one place, it's about all the places created so you can park your car. Parking has a lot of slack built into it. Most places have more square footage dedicated to parking than to the structure itself. *I don't have an assigned parking spot or anything like that, it's just that we have a private lot only for use of employees. So there's always going to be a spot somewhere for me.
giantg2 3y ago
I can see it being true given all the places that have large lots. Although I'm not sure what the author's point is by using that comparison, aside from being an emotional hook. The resources, needs/wants, etc for these are quite different. Same thing for the statement about 3-car garages vs 1 bedroom apartments - it mostly comes down to preferences and how those manifest in the market, politics, and other aspects of life.
bloak 3y ago
Just in case anyone's interested, in the UK a parking space is usually 2.4 x 4.8 metres, with 6 metres between the double rows of cars for manoeuvring. (It's not a law, as far as I know, but those dimensions are mentioned in lots of quasi-official recommendations.) That works out, in the limit, for a very large car park, as an area per parking space of 18.72 square metres, which is just over 201.5 square feet.

afiori 3y ago

I suspect that they are counting the parking surface nationwide to living space surface nationwide, not just domestic parking. For example this would include all the parking spaces at schools, offices, walmarts, etc.

josephcsible 3y ago
So when you go to work, they count the parking space there towards the square footage for your car, but not your office there towards the square footage for you? And when you stay at a hotel, they're counting the hotel's parking space towards the square footage for your car but not the hotel room towards the square footage for you? It's unfair and absurd to only count the square footage for you where you live, but to count the square footage for your car everywhere you ever drive it to.
- mym1990 3y ago
  That is the whole POINT. You don't pick up your house and move it every time you need to go to a grocery store(unless you live in your car, which many do), but that is exactly what you do with a vehicle. This means that the infrastructure needed to support the vehicle is actually massively more extensive than just the vehicle, leaving a footprint that is much bigger than just the car, and impacts almost all facets of day to day life.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    > You don't pick up your house and move it every time you need to go to a grocery store You are to your house as your car is to your driveway. You don't dig up your driveway and bring it with you every time you drive somewhere.
    - mym1990 3y ago
      You just argued against yourself though, because in a theoretical sense that is exactly what you do. If you don't have a parking space available at the location you are going to, a "public driveway" so to speak, you are not able to leave the car there. Now you could make a similar point about short term living situations like hotels, but I would imagine that the number of people who regularly stay in hotels is much lower than the number of people who own and operate a vehicle regularly.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        The point is that it's not any different than the living space itself. If you go from home to work, you need an office to be in while you're there in addition to a parking space, and for that time both your home and the parking space at your home are empty. But they're counting the parking space at the office and not the office space there.
        orwin 3y ago
        I don't need a parking space at my office. Never needed one.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        So either you park your car at the train station, and then the train station needs a parking space for you and according to this math it still counts as another one even if it's outside the city. Or you live within walking distance of mass transit, which most people can't because there isn't enough relevant land zoned for that kind of high density development for everyone to live in even if they wanted to. But I'll do you one better. If you work from home you don't need the parking space or the office space.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    "This means that the infrastructure needed to support..." ... the offices, schools, stores, etc is much larger than just a house. All the heating cooling, plumbing, etc and it sits empty most of the time (and you have to walk/drive past those regardless of their parking infrastructure). I fully get the point they are making. The thing the grandparent was talking about is that the argument could just as easily apply to the building spaces themselves rather than only the parking. Given this and the host of other categorical differences in parking vs occupied structures does in my view make the comparison "absurd". In general, this article is using a lot of numbers to make arguments that are really emotionally based.
    - mym1990 3y ago
      Certainly the notion that parking could just be replaced by housing(or anything else) in the snap of a finger is a stretch. The initial idea of the American dream and the single family home almost has to lead to a reliance on cars, especially in the suburbs(or did the advent of the car lead to the single family home dream?). Anyways, my point is that the buildings are productive, whether it be a school or a store or a home, but a parking space less so. Many communities have been able to use mass transportation alongside infra for bicycles/mopeds/scooters to make living in a city/town very enjoyable(but this isn't really what the article is getting at).
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Not only that, the total nationwide is essentially meaningless because of how many parking spaces there are in suburban areas where zoning prohibits the land from being used for much else or rural areas where the land isn't that scarce. Converting parking spaces into bigger lawns doesn't get you any more housing.
  - shagmin 3y ago
    It's pretty marginal but there are a couple instances where I'm at that are slowly being addressed, where some really large, poorly located parking lots are making some areas more flood prone and holding up development in their vicinity.
- bena 3y ago
  Even if you were to do that, parking has a larger footprint than habitation. Or whatever you want to call existing in a space. For example, if I go to Chipotle for lunch, I will go and park my car, go inside, get in line, order, blah. My car, and everyone else's car will take up 9x18 units. If it's busy, you could have a line 10 to 15 people deep. That's 1620 sq ft of parking for people who will be occupying about 360 sq ft on the inside. (Assuming 10 people all taking up a 6x6 block).
- afiori 3y ago
  I feel that there is a categoric misunderstanding here: there is no "natural" conversion rate between "parking footage" and "abitable footage", the claim from the book is just saying "There are a lot of parking! More than you think! The parking surface is bigger than the abitable surface", it is about conveying a sense of scale not about "the ratio is 1.2 but should be 0.7". As you have pointed out it could also means "The car in your driveway has 11 theorethical empty parking spots built for it, maybe there is an overallocation of resources" Some relevant resource might be: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6... from Not Just Bikes based on research from Strongtowns
stonedge 3y ago
This is what the data is based on. I've read the book and it's totaling all square footage in the country devoted to parking lots vs. housing. Essentially after the math, each car has more than just one space allocated to it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

michael1999 3y ago

Not really. An F150 is 8' wide to the mirror, and most people like to open the door. And they are 17.5' long, and nobody likes to touch the wall with their nose. If anything that's an understatement of the space used. Unless you have valets/robots packing the cars into solid blocks, every single parking space needs a full driveway beside to enter/exit, and that driveway needs to be wide enough to accommodate the turning radius during parking. For the F150, that's another 150sqft or so.

eropple 3y ago
"Most people like to open the door" is a beautiful line.
- iso1631 3y ago
  Some don't. Look at the iconic reveal of the Delorian in Back to the Future.
  - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
    *DeLorean
josephcsible 3y ago
I agree with you that 9'x18' is smaller than ideal. I just meant it's on the large side of what we actually have today.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Moreover, that's assuming that every car is a Ford F150. But what happens in practice is that the F150 gets parked next to a Toyota Corolla which is less than 6' wide and thereby has room to open the doors by extending them into the adjacent space.
- michael1999 3y ago
  Not really if you include the driveway too. A parking spot without access in/out is useless. When an aisle has parking both sides, this space is shared, so only 50% allocated to each space. But if you ever see an aisle with parking on only one side, you might be surprised how much more room cars need to get in/out. Even with shared aisles, it is ~100sqft. 300sqft for a parking spot really is a bare minimum. And that's before you start adding up common spaces like ramps, etc.

thelastgallon 3y ago

US has 2 billion parking spots. A car also needs room to maneuver into the spot, this makes the space 2 - 3x than just the area required to park a car.

josephcsible 3y ago
But the maneuvering space for your driveway is the road, which was there anyway.
- ajuc 3y ago
  Most of the road is only there because people use cars instead of public transport. Keep 2 lanes as necessary,the remaining lanes should be divided among the cars as wasted space caused by them.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    > Most of the road is only there because people use cars instead of public transport. Buses need roads too, and train tracks are just as big as roads but less versatile.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      > Buses need roads too And delivery vehicles, emergency vehicles, etc. We certainly had roads before we had cars.
      - goosedragons 3y ago
        Sure. Were they as wide? Do we need 4 lane stroads if most commuters moved to bicycles, public transit or walking?
        rootusrootus 3y ago
        There are considerably more people today than there were before cars, so it's hard to say how wide the roads would need to be if we could make bicycles, public transit, and walking a functional equivalent for cars.

dghlsakjg 3y ago

There are more than one parking spot per car. One at home, one at work, one at the grocery store, one at the cafe. Some of those are shared, but it is entirely believable that we have more paved parking than we have housing

iso1631 3y ago
https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parking-spaces-for-every-car-heres-how-cities-are-rethinking-that-land https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parki... "America has eight parking spaces for every car. Here’s how cities are rethinking that land" Wow.
- afiori 3y ago
  It is important to note that car usage an extra parking are strongly correlated as any car is either parked or travelling. If you add more cars without adding at least 2 parking spaces per car you almost surely get less usage or cars stuck in traffic. Car infrastructure is very expensive, see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...
josephcsible 3y ago
If you're only counting the square footage of people's homes rather than of everywhere they go, then you should also only count the square footage of their driveways rather than of everywhere they park their cars.
- afiori 3y ago
  This is only a fair comparison if you assume that cars are as important as people and deserve half of the space for everithing else in the world.
NumberWangMan 3y ago
Interestingly, one practical tactic for increasing walkability in cities is to focus on increasing the re-usability of parking. People who live in an apartment and drive to work don't need their parking space during the day, so sometimes you can have an apartment and an office share parking spaces, in the middle of a city. Obviously there's nowhere near 100% overlap, but if you can get to a situation where you only need 150% as much parking instead of of 200%, that's great.

seadan83 3y ago

Many building/land-use codes require one parking space per expected adult occupant. So we can multiply by two. Further, we are counting just parking at the residence, let alone the combined shared parking elsewhere. Plenty of roads has as much parking on either side as there is actual roadway

ChrisRackauckas 3y ago

You're missing big box stores like Walmart which each have tens of thousands of square feet of parking around them for every car which could potentially show up. Many times, these giant parking lots are mandated by law, so each grocery store has a parking lot, and each school has a parking lot. When you total it up, there are hundreds of places you could theoretically park your car, mostly mandated by law to exist. It makes all infrastructure bigger: you house is further from the store because you have to drive past a bunch of parking lots. If you go to a place that isn't driving dependent and you'll see that the main factor for "better walkability" is namely "places are a few miles closer because you don't have to walk through 20 parking lots to get there". It's pretty eye opening.

giantg2 3y ago
"If you go to a place that isn't driving dependent and you'll see that the main factor for "better walkability" is namely "places are a few miles closer because you don't have to walk through 20 parking lots to get there"." That's not really the main factor. I would say the main factor is medium to high density, mixed use areas that have business friendly regulations and/or wealthy residents/tourists. There aren't tons of large parking lots in west Philly, but I wouldn't give it a high walkability score given all the vacancies (where are you going to walk to?) and safety concerns (both in infrastructure and crime terms).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- afiori 3y ago
  The aneddotical example of when it can be the main factor is the famous Houston In The 70' photo: https://i.redd.it/rdh7zsqvz5q01.jpg https://i.redd.it/rdh7zsqvz5q01.jpg
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Still, not really. Even going with that picture, this is still a better description "medium to high density, mixed use areas that have business friendly regulations and/or wealthy residents/tourists.", as one could get rid of the parking lots, but that wouldn't make it necessarily better unless it's also mixed zoning (eg if those are all office buildings, you still have to drive to get to a restaurant, grocery, etc).

bena 3y ago

I have two parking spots that are essentially dedicated to my car. At work* and at home. I don't have to worry about parking at either of those spots. Ever. Everywhere I go out has parking. I need to pick something up at the hardware store and grocery store today. I'm not worried about the parking at either. Usually, there's plenty of empty spots at most locations I'll drive to. The few times I can't find a parking spot is around meal times at places with already limited parking. And I just remembered, I have a parking pass for a local stadium for games during that sport's season. That's another dedicated spot for my car. I believe right now, both stadiums have empty parking lots. I drive by a minor league baseball field every morning that has an empty lot. It's not just about the parking at one place, it's about all the places created so you can park your car. Parking has a lot of slack built into it. Most places have more square footage dedicated to parking than to the structure itself. *I don't have an assigned parking spot or anything like that, it's just that we have a private lot only for use of employees. So there's always going to be a spot somewhere for me.

giantg2 3y ago

I can see it being true given all the places that have large lots. Although I'm not sure what the author's point is by using that comparison, aside from being an emotional hook. The resources, needs/wants, etc for these are quite different. Same thing for the statement about 3-car garages vs 1 bedroom apartments - it mostly comes down to preferences and how those manifest in the market, politics, and other aspects of life.

bloak 3y ago

Just in case anyone's interested, in the UK a parking space is usually 2.4 x 4.8 metres, with 6 metres between the double rows of cars for manoeuvring. (It's not a law, as far as I know, but those dimensions are mentioned in lots of quasi-official recommendations.) That works out, in the limit, for a very large car park, as an area per parking space of 18.72 square metres, which is just over 201.5 square feet.