Why are American parking lots so big?

36 comments

1. Lots of cars, lots of cheap land

2. Zoning laws often have parking minimums

   also, people be driving

3. Because we have lots of cars….

4. Because Americans mostly get around using cars, and because there are local regulations requiring businesses to have enough parking spots that their customers don’t end up creating a nuisance by taking up all the street parking.

5. So we can park more cars?

6. To park cars

7. Because we have a population of 330+ million people with almost 300 million registered vehicles.

8. cars take up a lot of space and are the default mode of transport in most of the country

9. Parking lots are sized to accommodate the stores being at maximum capacity, or at least a decent percentage of said capacity.

10. because cars are incredibly space-inefficient, so if you have lots of them you need lots of space to park them.

11. To fit all the cars.

12. America has a lot more cars per person than the rest of the world. Honestly, I hate it with a passion.

13. In our driving-centric culture, it would be absurd not to have ample parking at a business or other facility, unless it’s in a major urban area with access from transit. But in most of the country, the car is king, and you’ll lose customers if you don’t have parking.

14. Minimum parking requirements.

    Fun fact: For roughly 300 million cars there are over 1 billion parking spaces in the U.S.

15. Some places have laws requiring amount of parking space per square foot of the building. My city just loosened the requirements, huge relief

16. The expectation is that many patrons will arrive in single occupancy vehicles.

17. Because our public transportation intentionally sucks so everyone has to have a car to get around.

18. There is actually a commission that measures the car market as a whole, then sets the parking lot space at the 80th percentile of vehicle size. Everything is built up from there.

19. In the Southern US, a lot of people drive big trucks or SUVs. You need the space. It is almost impossible to live in certain parts of the country without a car.

20. Cause most Americans have cars and most places outside urban metros (which is most of the country) don’t have much if any public transit.

21. Much of the country developed after the interstate highway system was built, after suburbanization became the norm, and after the WWII-era manufacturing plants were repurposed to build cheap abundant automobiles.

    As a result, in most of the country, cars are _the_ only viable means of getting to local businesses.

    So if you have a busy mall, say one with a several thousand people in it during the day, that means several thousand cars need to be parked outside.

22. You are probably driving everywhere unless you live in a huge metropolitan area with a robust public transportation system.

23. Car travel is used for shopping in most places, so it’s good for business. There are some shopping centers that I hate to shop at because their parking lots are tiny and chaotic.

24. Because we don’t know what we’ve got ’til it’s gone.

25. Bribery by automotive corporations to congress made America get by car only country.

26. Public transit is not an option for our suburban and rural dwellers because it’s not feasible. It’s drive or bust. The parking lots of Walmarts and such are big as they are for the few days a year when the store will be busy enough to fill it. Think black Friday, think other holidays

27. We have a shit ton of people.

28. Another factor to consider is that American vehicles have a wider variety of sizes, from small economy cars to big pickups and SUV’s. I assume an American parking lot would have larger spaces to accommodate different sizes as opposed to a country where most cars would qualify as “compacts” to Americans.

29. Because we have a lot of big cars and many areas are not easily accessible by public transportation.

30. Because we have a lot of cars and need to put them somewhere while we shop, eat, attend shows, etc.

    Have you seen the multilevel parking garages we have?

31. Some are excessively large, some are excessively small, some are appropriately sized to the number of people visiting XYZ location.

32. Because nothing pisses people off like not being able to find a parking spot.

33. American housing system is notoriously low in density, making it very difficult and expensive to implement efficient public transit.

    As a result, people resort to drive their personal vehicle to…..pretty much any activities outside of their home.

    And, in order to meet this demand, they almost have to have big parking lots. (Wide or tall)

    Minus some pocket of urban areas with enough density and walkability to be sustainable, you pretty much cannot operate retail businesses without the parking lots.

    Customers cannot reach your business without the cars, and they need the space to park them.

34. Because the places with big parking lots were developed post-Model T. There are plenty of places without spreads of parking lots. You just gotta look at places that were built up pre-1900.

35. Because we all have cars and need to drive them everywhere even if it’s just around the block

36. Massive country that is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe + Less land development simply due to how young and massive the US is compared to many European countries + A lot of empty space means a lot of cheap land + America is a very car centric society = Big parking lots.