An Open Letter To The Man Who Invented Parking Lots,
I don't even know who you are, or where to begin. Perhaps i should start with a little introduction.
I live in a city. I won't specify which one. I live in a city because i need hustle. And after the hustle, i need some bustle following that. That's awfully cliched and generic. Let me try this again. What i need is a place so small and compact that standing in a crowd makes you feel smaller. I want to feel small by virtue of the number of others around me. But, i want to be able to remove myself from this at anytime. I do not want Nature to have an unfair advantage over me. This is the opposite of where i came from: Colorado. The Centennial State is HUGE. Immense. But not because someone made it that way, it is gigantic with or without the people. I cannot dispel that largess, ever. Colorado is so spread out. This means that simple errands are carried out over large distances and durations. When i lived in Colorado, i would have to spend at least 10 minutes just driving to get milk. Never mind the walking to and fro the car, which was placeed in a parking lot.
Here's where you, kind sir, come in. I'm sorry to say, but i LOATHE parking lots. You don't have them here in the city (or they are rare species that have degenerative genes that won't be passed on). So much could be built on the land that parking lots consume (or more importantly, so much land could be spared the trampling). When did you think to invent them? I must know, when you came up with the idea for them, did you weep knowing you were contributing to the decimation of this great land? Or did you celebrate? Did you happily submit your plans for the first parking lot thinking you'd finally found a use for that pesky six acres of open space that was poking your community in the eye? Or, i hope, did you sigh with deep melancholy that you had created something society 'needed' but realized you had started something you could not stop?
I for one would like to go back in time and PUNCH YOU IN THE FUCKING NOSE. You are behind so much waste that has led to more waste, and so on. God dammit, i'm really pissed about this! I think i'll put my pen down...
...okay, that didn't work.
Dear sir, i hope that wherever you are buried, the current landowners receive a bid from some commercial real estate developer to graze the land of your peaceful last resting place, and pave it over with hot, scorching asphalt. And for every jalopy or hybrid SUV that rolls across your decomposed bones, you somehow, poetically, realize the error of your ways.
Good day,
DC
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
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1 comments:
Not that you needed to know, but the size of parking lots are dictated by the number of parking spaces. The number of parking spaces is dictated by city code which is based on a square footage formula and usually reads something like "Thou shalt provide +/- 5 parking spots for each 1000 persons anticipated to visit said development. Thou shalt also provide X number of ADA approved stalls proportional to the total number of parking spots in said lot. Furthermore thou shalt provide appropriate fire lanes and exists in order to come into compliance with fire code based on occupancy classification and total building square footage." That is how you end up with these massive parking lots that only seem to be totally filled around Christmas time.
Oddly enough, it is part of a designer's job (designer being different than project manager in Architecture lingo) to design the parking lot, which then dictates the final size of the buildings that are put on the site, which dictate the number of parking stalls.
And yes this is me once again blaming planning departments for what we have to live with out here.
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