Parking Laws Are Strangling America | Climate Town

Like my Dad used to tell me, “If something is stupid and doesn’t make any sense, somebody is getting rich somewhere.”

Parking lots have gotten so big that people living in a 15 minute city probably walk less than those walking from their cars to the entrance of Walmart.

I am a very aged woman and find your videos easy to watch and informative. I appreciate your research and collaboration with Not Just Bikes and Strong Towns. Your creativity and humor is fun and funny! I will find the podcast. Thank you for all that you do.

One of my biggest car-centric complaints is the town I live in has 4 bridges that go over the main river that bisects the town. Two of them have no shoulder or side walk AT ALL. So depending where you are in town you are either looking at literally 4 mile detour to cross the river safely, or you're walking in traffic on one of the busiest roads in town

I love that we have paved over every public space with these parking lots, but if you try to hang out in them and have a conversation the police will come and tell you that you can't be there.

As a Greek, I think I finally understand why parking lots are mentioned so often in American anecdotes, insults, headlines, Reddit posts, etc.

As a truck driver I want to make you aware that there is a severe shortage of safe truck parking. Every city wants us to deliver their freight but very few want us to be allowed to legally park for our Federally required rest breaks. If some of the excess parking for regular passenger vehicles were to be re-zoned for semi truck parking it would really help.

I HATE PARKING LOTS. I HATE PARKING. I HATE CARS AND DRIVING. ALL OF IT. Thank you for making me mad for half an hour. thumbs up.

Thank you so much for the shoutout! Our mini-doc on Fayetteville is still probably the video I'm most proud of so far. -Mike

favorite part is when the huge megastore is 'right across the street' from the other huge megastore but you HAVE to drive to the other huge megastore because of the massive parking lot separating the two of them

I work in hospitality development, basically buying or building hotels. The parking requirements in many areas are absolutely insane, and can go up to 1.5 spaces per guestroom plus employee spaces (aka 150% parking capture, nuts!) We tried to show them data from across every hotel we owned, surveyed, or managed the highest requirement for parking was 62% at most, and they still wouldn't budge. Cancelled the deal, and that lot has sat empty for the last 5 years since and counting...

15:25 Actually this makes sense. The more employees you have at the store, the less space there is for customers. At some point, there is no space for customers at all anymore, so you won't need any parking space 👍

it makes me so sad that america wasnt even always this way. seeing past footage of hundreds of people walking around and taking public transit just for all that to be bulldozed for the car, in modern day. just a complete regression

As a child in the Netherlands I always wondered why they only ever showed the industrial areas of Los Angeles in tv shows and movies, because that is what I associated the low boxy buildings with parking spaces all around with.

Thanks for tackling this huge but obscure problem! As someone involved with construction and development in DFW for over 20 years - there are a whole slew of additional problems you didn't even touch on this video. One time a developer was forced to pave then install curb and gutter on the portion of road in front of their business, on their dime - despite it being a rural road with bar ditches with the nearest connecting curb over 1 mile away. To this day there is a random 150' single-sided length of curb all by it's lonesome. :-/ You would be AMAZED how much of the development guidelines are simply "that's what someone said it should be" or "because that's what it's always been".

As Joni Mitchell sang, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" lalala la.

The fact that these miserable parking requirements were invented by an organization that wanted to mitigate damage by cars is honestly frustrating.

I love that stores can have 300 parking spots but people circle the lot for 10 minutes trying to snag the closest spots.

As someone whom lives in Southern Arizona where the heat island effect can be felt to the extreme, we wonder why we dont get rain anymore and have draughts but continue to expand our concrete jungle and disallow anything that will help retain water in the ground such as grass.

I don't know who you are, why this was in my feed, or really why I even clicked it and sat through it all. But I am glad I did. You made what would otherwise be an incredibly boring subject interesting and informative. I'll give you a thumbs up for keeping me engaged for 30 minutes.