Around the same time this study was released, Copenhagenize wrote an unrelated article titled "The Arrogance of Parking Space," which looked at the amount of space taken up by parking to serve the relatively small number of Copenhagen residents that own vehicles. (Only about 22% of households own cars there.) It included a striking map, showing that if every parking space in the region were put together into a single surface parking lot it would completely obliterate the city center. Parking is distributed throughout the region, so its effects can be difficult to perceive at a macro level; putting all those spaces side-by-side really helps to illustrate just how much space is devoted to the non-productive storage of vehicles.

And while far more people drive and own cars in LA than in Copenhagen, I thought we could use some similar perspective. So like Copenhagenize, I made a map that shows how much space parking takes up in LA County, and like Copenhagenize, it was shocking. To estimate the amount of parking space, I assumed that each parking stall would require about 300 square feet of space, including the access and circulation area needed for cars to get around any parking lot. At 300 square feet per parking space, those 18.6 million LA County spaces would take up approximately 200 square miles. (Authors of the American Planning Association article came to the same conclusion.) Here's about what that would look like:

If all the parking in LA were one big, red surface parking lot, it would measure 16 miles in diameter, reaching from East LA to Santa Monica