Why cities like Phoenix will have smaller parking lots in the future


Yesterday, which was Christmas morning, I did something that I've been doing for years and years, which is to go visit empty parking lots. I enjoy the quiet of it, and it always gives me food for thought, and today I'm imagining the future of places like Phoenix, and Los Angeles, which is where this kid from Minneapolis first saw these gigantic, sprawling parking lots.

I'm sure that when these gigantic parking lots started appearing, it was wonderful for people who wanted to be sure that they could find a parking spot, and here in the Phoenix area we just take that for granted. I moved here from LA in 1989, and I've never, ever, had a problem finding a parking spot, even if I have to walk quite a bit to the store. It wasn't true in Los Angeles, where it seemed that no matter how big the parking lots were, they were jammed full, and sometimes I would drive around, and find no place to park, and just have to go back to my apartment (where I was glad to have a parking spot!).

But I will live long enough to see self-driving cars begin to take over, and it will change the amount of space that parking lots require. Sure, there will still need to be room for the cars to sit outside and wait for you after they drop you off, but they won't need the kind of space that current parking lots require - the cars will tuck together. I'm no math wizard, but I'd imagine that over 75% of the space in a parking lot is wasted just to allow human drivers to navigate it.

Now please calm down if you're an old-timer, and you've already started ranting about self-driving cars. I understand, and I've heard it all before. In my lifetime I've heard people vow that they'd never have a computer in their home, never carry around a mobile phone, things like that. And if I were older, I'm sure I'd have heard from old-timers who insisted that horses were just fine, and that they'd never drive one of them-thar crazy "horseless carriages" (automobiles). But it happens, and when it, does people forget what the world was like before those things.

So you can consider the photo that I took yesterday as a historic record. The sprawling parking lots will be smaller, and hopefully the space will be used wisely, maybe for parks, for areas that people can walk, that sort of thing. Maybe there'll be more trees! I can dream, can't I?

Thank you for time-traveling with me.

Image at the top of this post: The parking lot of Basha's grocery store, 75th Avenue and Thunderbird, Peoria, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix) on Christmas Day.
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