More and more land that could otherwise be utilised for making a park or a sports facility is being used as Parking Lots! Thanks to urbanization, land equal to 1000 football fields put together is currently being used for parking vehicles in Indiana’s Tippecanoe County.
According to Bryan Pijanowski of Purdue University, this number is thrice the number of drivers in the county! Home to 155,000 residents, the total parking area is about 355,000 as revealed in digitalized aerial surveys in 2005 to estimate the total parking area.
The growing demand for land to park vehicles is also an environmental concern as the study by Bryan Pijanowski shows that parking lots are a big source of water pollution.
Parking lots gather a lot of pollutants like oil, grease, heavy metal, which, when washed by rain, reaches rivers and lakes.
The Tippicanoe study also reveals that paved parking lot, doesn’t allow rain to get absorbed into the ground and can cause floods and erosion in the locality.
Paved parking lots also support the Urban heat island theory according to which concrete buildings and roads can retain heat for much longer time than the rural terrains; thereby the temperature of parking lot is higher by at least 2 degrees as they absorb more of sun’s light and heat.
Growing dependence on vehicles and business mindedness is a major contributor to this problem. If only those who are paving the land to make more and more money could work out an economically as well as environmentally convenient idea.
Via: MSNBC
