Underutilized Parking Lots

From Gray Lot to Green Spot

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Some neighborhoods are closer to large expanses of parking lot than to parks. With some creativity, underutilized parking lots can be serve as public plazas, open air markets, and vegetated open space during off-hours.

Green Parking Lots Save Money

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Directing drainage patterns in parking lots to natural vegetated swales can capture storm-water runoff closer to the source, reducing the cost of traditional curbing, gutters, and piping. Greening parking lots with trees can increase neighboring property values, and increase the lifespan of paving.

Green Parking Lots Are Good For Public Health

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Did you know that temperatures in parking lots can be 20-40 degrees higher than the surrounding areas? Urban heat has been associated with adverse health effects, from heat-related mortality to smog. Greening parking lots can help us reduce these health impacts by increasing shade and carbon sequestration through trees.

Across the Gateway Cities, there are vast stretches of asphalt and concrete parking lots for commercial, industrial, and government purposes. The Underutilized Parking Lots greenscape is meant to focus exclusively on industrial and government-owned properties where parking spaces are not in regular demand. The parking lots (in grey) on the map below come from a dataset of parking lots from Los Angeles County from 2014 (the latest data) and represent only those in a parcel that is industrial or publicly owned — but not a school or park.

By rethinking these underutilized parking lots, we have the opportunity to transform portions of lots to shaded, tree-lined permeable urban plazas to create new recreational options for park-poor communities. Scroll around and zoom into the map to see Underutilized Parking Lots throughout the Gateway Cities region. You can also use the layers panel (top left) to toggle on and off all greenscape types. Where are the opportunities in your neighborhood?