Parking Power and Planning Departments – By Guest Blogger NapaEric
Parking lots for shopping malls, big box stores, warehouses and office buildings are all subject to the local planning departments. The planning departments have a standard set of rules for the design of buildings and also parking lots. The typical parking lot is required to have landscaping for aesthetics and safety. This often requires trees, hedges and flower areas which require an irrigation system and maintenance in the form of gardening and repairs.
The trees usually take several years before they grow into shade trees, the hedges a few years to develop and the flowers usually need to be replanted every year. This all requires water which is becoming an ever more precious commodity.
When the trees grow enough to provide shade they are often the most desirable parking spaces in the parking lot. Seeing each tree surrounded by parked cars is not an unfamiliar sight. Not only does this keep the interior of the car cooler for when the owner returns but also helps to keep the car interior from premature aging. Car owners know that a car kept garaged and in the shade maintains its new car character much longer.
Photo voltaic PV shade producing structures provide shade as soon as they are built, do not require scarce water usage and maintenance is minimal compared to any tree. These PV structures also produce electricity which offsets the added electric needs of the buildings.
It may seem that I am against trees and hedges when in fact I am very much for them. Pity the poor tree planted in an asphalt desert with an unnatural life line of water that may be too little or too much. Cars knocking into it and very few of its own kind nearby. It is a cruel thing to subject a tree to life in a parking lot.
The Planning Department is the rule maker and they can change their own rules for the good of human beings and for the good of trees. All the Planning Departments have to do is require PV structures in new parking lots. The parking spaces that are shaded by PV structures will be the first spaces filled. The car owners will be happier to have shade which does not drop sap that damages paint jobs. The building owners will be happier because the people are happier AND the electric bills will be lower. The trees will be happier to be planted in a tree friendly place with other trees and the irrigation water can be used more productively.
Please contact Planning Departments, Schools for Planning, Architectural Schools, The EPA, City Planners and every politician and every voter.
Thank you
