How much parking space does one Wal-Mart need?
- Kaid Benfield
- Director, Smart Growth Program, Washington, DC
- Blog | About
- Posted August 11, 2008 in Living Sustainably
A lot, the giant company apparently thinks. But not as much as they think, say the facts:
12:30 pm, Buncombe County, south of Asheville, NC, last week (August 6)
For a startling depiction of the company's spread across the American landscape, see my colleague Ian Wilker's post on the OnEarth site. Still, Wal-Mart is all about being green. Right?
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Comments
Dan Staley — Aug 11 2008 02:39 PM
Likely the parking requirements are from code, which likely mirrors ITE standards, which is either 4.0 or 5.0 stalls/1000 sf. That is to accommodate peak times. And the diagonal in parking takes up more room. And there are no trees to mitigate stormwater, provide shade, mitigate the craptacular expanse of asphalt. Nor are there stormwater detention facilities, placing greater stress on the municipal system.
IF standards were to change the parking requirements to _average_ times, not only would be be closer to 2.0 stalls/1000 sf, making the lot smaller, but stormwater mitigation would green up that lot, cooling it and making it more attractive.
Kaid @ NRDC — Aug 11 2008 02:46 PM
Thanks for reading and the insights, Dan. I suspect you are quite right about code, which basically mandates sprawl in too many places, and I totally agree about the stormwater mitigation strategies as well.
Dan Staley — Aug 11 2008 07:53 PM
Kaid:
Cities don't have to use ITE numbers, but it is costly to get better, more localized trip generation and resultant parking numbers. It is easy enough to mandate lower numbers (which developers would like too, as parking is costly), but sadly few do it.