like an airport or the halls of a shopping mall, parking lots exist solely as a place inbetween places. building codes like minimum parking requirements bump up the square footage of lots to sometimes be more than that of the destinations themselves.

the ubiquity of these lots establishes driving as a preferred and therefore subsidized method of transportation. they are spacing out our cities and denying pedestrians a convenient way around. there is nearly no way to opt out of driving in most cities.

the introduction of autonomous vehicles onto american roads has the potential to radically shift car ownership habits into ridesharing ones. companies like lyft and uber have demonstrated this ridesharing to be well-accepted and lucrative business model in most all american cities.

you may be wondering,
what do parking lots have to do with this?

according to most reports, cars spend 95% of their time parked. proliferation of AV in tandem with ridseshare services on the streets would hopefully make car ownership obsolete along with parking lots. there would be no for need for space to park cars behind because they would simply be on the way to their next ride.

a survey of the twin cities area for surface parking lots revealed 8,356 lots. this map aims illustrate the sheer amount of square footage of potentially livable or otherwise usable space dedicated to slabs of open asphalt. some foresight into how these spaces ripe for development are repurposed after they are no longer need could change the shape of life in our cities.