Perhaps the most straightforward way to transform a parking lot into an amenity more useful for humans is to simply transform it into a park or plaza. Savannah, Georgia is famously home to a park system that regularly spaces parks, gardens, and public squares within a rectilinear street grid. Savannah’s parks are not some frivolous amenity for the wealthy. Studies have shown that parks with greenery improve both public health and property values. Parks are an asset, while parking lots are a liability. It makes sense to replace America’s parking lots with gardens, yards, plazas, and parks.

To create these parks and plazas, cities will need to identify a regular spacing of parking lots to be converted. This will require planners to identify target parking lots roughly a quarter mile apart. A quarter mile distance will mean these parks will be about a five-minute walk from one another. Having so many parks in walking distance will establish a sense that every home, office, factory, and storefront has access to a public “backyard” of sorts. Generously providing space for pickup soccer games, a lazy Sunday grilling session, or just a place to chill with friends goes a very long way toward making dense downtown apartments more pleasantly livable. In fact, the quality of life improvements green parks provide are precisely the reason lands around parks are sold at a premium.

The Guardian has published a helpful design guide of sorts for parks and plazas, based on a soon-to-be published study by SWA Group. All of these ideas are compatible with the Strong Towns ethos of incremental development and New Urbanism’s tactical urbanism concepts. You can start building parks and plazas in your community’s empty parking lots today!

New Housing

Another use for these soon-to-be depreciating parking lots will be housing. Large parking lots next to significant retail facilities are the perfect place to site multifamily housing developments. Placing dense housing adjacent to retail improves the experience of both the housing residents and the retailers. Retailers gain a “captive audience” of shoppers, while the adjacent residents gain easy access to the goods and services they use daily. In addition, when more people live within walking distance of their daily needs, the need for transportation across town (via cars or busses) is greatly reduced. In short, building homes adjacent to retail is actually likely to further reduce car use and therefore compound the volume of parking lot space that can be repurposed.

Public Amenities

Many parking lots can also be repurposed to provide public amenities. This is especially true where housing and green parks are attached to an existing parking lot. Recreative facilities like public pools, tennis, basketball and urban soccer courts go well with apartment complexes and encourage kids and adults to engage in active socialization with one another. Public services can also be provided in these former parking lots. Imagine if afterschool programs for kids were run directly adjacent to where those same children lived. Picture small kindergartens, preschools and church programs taking place next to parks that double as platforms for recreation on the weekends. The synergies that arise from combining public amenities with parks and housing encourage people to get out of the house to mingle with their neighbors. Positive externalities like community groups, business deals, and friendships are born from this socialization and begin to establish the tight, personal bonds indicative of a strong town.