Originally Posted by
Artkansas
Let's not forget parking lots. They consume huge amounts of land, drive up the cost of goods and the vast expanses of concrete and asphalt have a major effect on the ecology. What might have been a green field with a stream flowing through it, is now black and radiating heat back into space.
Beyond the amount of land that they consume, parking lots have the effect of spreading things further apart, making it harder to walk from one place to the next, thus making us more car dependent. It is a viscous cycle. Automobile infrastructure tends to make a community less friendly to other forms of transit.