Rethinking a lot ebook

->>>> Click Here to Download <<<<<<<-

Parking lots as landscapes ripe for transformation: new uses for urban spaces traditionally considered banal and devoid of culture. There are an estimated ,, passenger cars in the world, and that number is increasing every day. So too is Earth's supply of parking spaces. In some cities, parking lots cover more than one-third of the metropolitan footprint.

It's official: we have paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Parking lots, he writes, are ripe for transformation. After all, their design and function has not been rethought since the s.

With this book, Ben-Joseph pushes the parking lot into the twenty-first century. Ben-Joseph shows that parking lots can be aesthetically pleasing, environmentally and architecturally responsible, and used for something other than car storage.

With purposeful design, Ben-Joseph argues, parking lots could be significant public places, contributing as much to their communities as great boulevards, parks, or plazas.

For all the acreage they cover, parking lots have received scant attention. It's time to change that; it's time to rethink the lot. Parking spaces clumped in lots shape this rigorous analysis of open space. They are often wasted space. They can cause drainage problems. Ben-Joseph looks at ways that parking lots, a necessary part of city planning, can be improved to lessen their negative economic and environmental impact.

The book feels like a collage; pictures and words put together to give an overall sense of what Ben-Joseph wants to say. Some of the book, like the diagrams on parking conditions and parking lot typologies, feels like it was put together for his MIT students. Other sections, like the short mentions of drive-in church, flea markets and weekend food vendor gatherings, seem to be aimed at community planners. Black and white photos of old cars and parking lots seem geared towards casual browsing.

Historians may find interest in the parking problems from chariots and horse drawn buggies. This collage feel may be exactly what the author intends, but it makes it hard to determine who the intended audience might be. Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith. Christopher Smith. In real terms, even a small recalibration of surface parking lots can have large consequences on the workings of the built and natural worlds.

In order to intervene, however, a better understanding of the surface lot—culturally, environmentally and economically—is required. And this it does, with wit and grace. These, in turn, are further broken down into bite-sized segments, some of which are two paragraphs in length.

The result is a very accessible read that is easily referenced. A peppering of wonderful photographs and imagery throughout makes it that much easier to go through. Following the cleverly named introduction A Lot of My Mind , the first chapter A Lot in Common introduces the parking lot as one of the most common and under appreciated spaces of the contemporary city and describes its social and cultural significance in North America.

It also outlines key metrics and standards around their creation as well as the larger effects of parking on the environment water, energy, etc. Lots of Time looks at the interesting history and development of surface parking.