Parking the lot

There are many things we take for granted as being part of a city landscape. Gas stations, banks, parks, stores…however the largest occupying force of a city landscape is something we just don’t think about. It’s the ground below us when we’re at this particular, gas station, bank, store, or any other place. It’s a parking lot. Parking lots can almost be viewed as a growing plague covering the earth one mini mall or super Wal-Mart at a time. Typically a parking lot vastly occupies large quantities of space, which in a lot of cases goes unoccupied by cars. I seriously question if businesses adequately think about how big of a parking lot they need. It seems to me that they multiply the maximum customer base at a busiest period and multiply by two. There is such a waste of space being covered by asphalt and concrete. Within the past fifty years our country has seen ground occupied by parking lots skyrocket. In many cases buildings are tore down…luscious grass land is plowed and paved all so the parking lot can span its callous presence over more of the landscape. How sad is it when a local landmark is demolished only to become reincarnated by a flat piece of paved ground to help better serve patrons of a nearby store or business. This has been the case in Hollywood for a long time now. If you’re in Hollywood at 2719 Hyperion you’ll see a parking lot…what you would have seen years ago…Walt Disney’s first every studio. The garden of Allah, a renowned apartment villa housing celebrities like John Barrymore and even F. Scott Fitzgerald was a lavish lush getaway to many of Hollywood’s golden stars. Pictures are all that remain however, now you will find a parking lot. Up until 1956 on 6811 Hollywood Blvd you would have seen the Hollywood Hotel, yet another renowned gathering place for stars of the stage and screen…yet again a parking lot is now the current resident of this address.

            Space for customers to leave their car is the only real benefit of parking lots. There are many cons however. A parking lot being in nature a large flat plane is definitely in danger of producing massive water runoffs if drainage isn’t properly executed. Flooding of sewers and stream ways can occur in torrential downpours. Perhaps a parking lots’ design has taken into consideration the run off issue, there’s still another issue that presents itself; water pollution. Parking lots are a cause of contamination with all the oil, brake lining dust, rust particles, and other car fluids which accumulate on any given parking lot. Thus, the draining of contaminated water is more then capable of working its way into our water supply chain and the ground itself. In college and I imagine in your own college experiences, there was Q lot. Q lot was a vast concrete and asphalt desert that spans the length of several football fields and the width of about the same. Under the hot Midwest sun walking through this desert was exhausting, the heat produced was almost unbearable, leading to a “Lawrence of Arabia” type atmosphere, countless students rummaging in their book bags for that last drop of Evian or Aquafina, hoping that the buzzards would not be their demise. I started thinking…and even tried to research to no avail, the average amount of oil that is found dried on the surface of parking lots. Now I don’t know for sure exactly how much that is, but I imagine the liquid form of all America’s oil from parking lots could easily fill a large lake.

            Recently parking lots have become a concept creation to architectural and design firms. Cleverly placed islands of pebbles and saplings becoming patters and mazes of concrete and greenery. In my mind, “landscaping” a parking lot once occupying untouched earth is kind of like fully shaving a Sasquatch to test Rogaine on its head. The ends don’t really justify the means. Society has also taken the simple act of parking and made it complicated. There are four…count them…four means of different means of parking. The first being perpendicular parking, this of course where cars are parked next to each other forming a very organized grid like pattern. The next form of parking is angled parking. Angled parking is similar to perpendicular parking accept that you come into the parking spot at a flattering angle instead of a full 90 degree turn. Angled parking is a bit less efficient in nature; however with parking lots that encompass the spaces of several football fields, I guess efficient parking really isn’t much of an issue. Parallel parking is easily the most feared mode of parking; where the driver must miraculously wedge himself front to back with other cars beside a curb. Nearly impossible to pull off with a large car, parallel parking demonstrates the need for cars to have a zero turn radius to go sideways into the space, or maybe some kind of rocket thrusting device…I don’t know plans are still in the works. The fourth and final means of parking is of course valet. This is easily the laziest form of parking where essentially the driver doesn’t feel like messing with any other form of parking and instead pays for a teenager….probably incapable of the parallel park…to have his way with an expensive car. The logic in this escapes me…then again I doubt many valet parkers find themselves in Dodges very often.

            I did some serious thinking and I think that parking spaces themselves are just going to have to get wider. As vehicles get wider there is less space to open the door without banging your door into the car next to you. I was curious so I found some numbers for you to toss around in your head. According to my findings the average parking space width is 6.5 feet.  This means that with cars next to you…being parked properly…you have only 6.5 feet to pull in open your door and exit your vehicle...all without leaving a little souvenir of paint on the car next to you. This scenario would be perfect if you drive a small car. In case you haven’t noticed small cars aren’t the “in” thing right now. The average full-size car is 5.5 feet wide. Let’s do the math eh? Full-size car width 5.5ft. Parking spot width 6.5ft. That means you have 1 ft. to open your door and exit the vehicle. And this 1 ft. is of course if the other cars are within their spaces correctly. Can you get out of your car with 1 inch of space….not without a struggle is my guess. Now if that weren’t enough I decided to see about a big SUV’s width. I found that the average width of the Chevy Suburban is 6.5ft and in case you have forgotten the average parking spot width is….6.5ft. That means you have exactly no room to get out, you’re literally next to the car next to you, you’re going to have to use the damned sunroof or back door. That’s not convenient. That’s not cool.

            Since many businesses don’t want to spend the money to repaint their parking spaces and make them wider, I think the only viable option if for larger car…truck and SUV dealers to start making cars with those sweet assed Lamborghini doors that open vertically, you know the ones that go up instead of out. How many times have kids swung open a SUV door without thinking and banged up the car next to them. This wouldn’t happen with vertical doors. I can’t see a HUGE cost in substituting normal doors with the cool Lamborghini doors, but man that would really cut down on small insurance claims dealing with chips in paint and dings. Parking lots can truly be dangerous and destitute places. I think we should concentrate on developing a super strong form of grass that will allow cars to drive over it without damaging it. We’d also need more economical cars of course, but if everyone works together we can one day lick the parking lots of the future without having to get a tetanus shot or risk contracting gonorrhea.