A car spends 95 percent of the time parked, and only 5 percent of its time in use. The huge amount of space that system requires is made "intuitively and accessibly" comparable by the What the Street project.
Adele Peters reports on a "new visualization shows the footprint of each [parking] lot, arranged in a puzzle-like design next to every other parking lot in greater Los Angeles, to make a point about how cities use space."
"The visualization is part of a project called What the Street? that inventories parking lots in 23 cities around the world, along with the space used for roads, rail lines and rail yards, and bike paths and bike parking," adds Peters. "The code for the project is open source so it can be applied to other cities."
Peters also notes that a shift to "on-demand autonomous cars" could eventually open up some of this space for other uses.
FULL STORY: See How Much Of A City's Land Is Used Just For Parking Spaces
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Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research