A Brief Cultural History of the Parking Lot

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/brief-cultural-history-of-the-parking-lot/

by wallflower • 6 years ago

46 14 6 years ago

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

throw0101a2• 6 years ago

A good book on how the automobile came to (the American) city streets:

Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as "jaywalkers." In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as "road hogs" or "speed demons" and cars as "juggernauts" or "death cars." He considers the perspectives of all users--pedestrians, police (who had to become "traffic cops"), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for "justice." […]

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2924825-fighting-traffic

See also the book:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking

paxys• 6 years ago

It's fascinating to see the differences in how automobile traffic was accepted in different cities and cultures. America is pretty much as described in the above passage. On the other hand a good chunk of European cities are decidedly pedestrian and bicycle friendly. And the fight is still ongoing across South/SE Asia, where cars, motorcycles, pedestrians (and sometimes animals) all claim right of way.

sarora272• 6 years ago

This reminds me of a cool video i saw the other day of San Francisco's Market Street in 1906: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_1AdYRGW8&ab_channel=Denis...

It's so interesting to see how people, street cars, horse & carts, and cars all seemed to share the road in what seemed like a controlled chaos manner

wolfgang422• 6 years ago

Note that this video was apparently partly staged, with cars circling around to come by the camera again, so it’s probably not entirely representative of actual traffic patterns at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_Down_Market_Street

(The Wikipedia article also has an original scan of the video, without the AI confabulation and added sound effects, or a higher quality version with added sound here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2u4J7Dbouo)

sushicalculus• 6 years ago

Whenever I think of suburbia, I think of larger homes, malls, and highways. It makes sense that suburbia got parking lots while downtowns got parking garages ... but I had never really given the parking lot much thought until this article

throw0101a2• 6 years ago

while downtowns got parking garages

Let me introduce you to pre-condo boom downtown Toronto, Canada:

* https://www.blogto.com/city/2011/10/that_time_when_toronto_w...

The rise of lots occurred after the construction of the downtown Gardner highway:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardiner_Expressway

Nowadays land is too valuable to be flat, and so most/all parking lots have been turned into towers (condo(minium) and commercial):

* http://www.mapto.ca/maps/parkinglots

prawn• 6 years ago

Something I find interesting is whether the better layout for a large store complex is an island of shops surrounded by car parking, or a donut of shops (with street frontage and displays) with interior parking.

Former provides a quick view of accessible parking and minimises in-mall walking whereas the latter means stores can promote their wares to passing cars more easily.

A couple of recent big box store builds in Australia I've noticed (Bunnings in SA) are one-brand warehouses built on top of a single storey of car parking. Once in the store and even in the outdoor garden centre, it feels identical to older ground level stores. More compact footprint, car parking is protected from the elements, and the store has a branded facade on the street.

jbay808• 6 years ago

The 'donut' is also much more welcoming and safe for pedestrian traffic, who don't have to cross the parking lot twice to get to the post office/Starbucks/etc.

ohples• 6 years ago

Parking lots don't have culture, they take from it.

clwk• 6 years ago

  Don't it always seem to go
  That you don't know what you got
  Til its gone

shardinator• 6 years ago

Exactly

poma88• 6 years ago

The most horrendous spaces of the US, showing the car lobby successes on PR, ond how they influenced the average mindset

A Brief Cultural History of the Parking Lot

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