I understand what you're saying, but it sounds like a kind of sunk cost fallacy. If a parking lot has been sitting empty for years and nobody has any plan to do

I understand what you're saying, but it sounds like a kind of sunk cost fallacy. If a parking lot has been sitting empty for years and nobody has any plan to do anything with it, maybe it's time to tear it up. The bad decision to build it in the first place has already been made, we can't undo it by waiting and hoping. You can at least recycle the asphalt to get a bit of use out of it. Rewilding unnecessary farmland is also a good idea. As usual in these conversations, there's no reason we can't do both.