The only problem is adding solar to car parks will ensure that those car parks remain there. Surprised to see so much support for this in the solarpunk community of all places.
How about we get that wish in, say, 10 or 20 years instead of your strawman scenario? Transforming cities to be walkable/bikable does not take that long, if you’re serious about it.
No I didn’t. First of all, forgetting and disregarding aren’t the same thing.
Second, living in a small town isn’t an excuse. Small towns are inherently walkable (due to being, ya know, small) unless you somehow manage to design them spectacularly wrong. And contrary to American belief, it is actually possible to provide rail transit to them: the US itself used to do it 100 years ago, and Japan still does.
Personal cars are going to be here for way longer than 20 years, but 20 years is still long enough to build a lot of solar panels, so the same questions still arise. What will your answer be?
Tops of buildings, over canals, may be even over roads and rail.
It isn’t that far out of reach that a car park gets covered in solar panels, then the next developer reuses them when redeveloping the site for denser development.
That’s a false dichotomy. I can choose a third option. Where we place car parking garages (multi-level above or underground) all around ring roads and ban cars from entering city centers. Then we put solar panels on top of most roofs, and in fields for grazing animals.
This obsession with car parks is exclusively American.
So you want to demolish all the car parks that already exist? All of them, tomorrow? Don’t you think it will take some time before the builders can come and replace the last car park in your country with whatever it’s going to be replaced with? During that time, would it not be better to put solar panels on it? (And then remove them before it gets demolished and put them somewhere else)
I am not American, I just think it’s a stupid criticism of such a plan that we “shouldn’t have cars and therefore shouldn’t have car parks” because the fact is that we already do have them so we may as well use them as best we can.
In any case I don’t agree on a total ban on cars entering city centres, at least not in the foreseeable future. The most bike-friendly cities I have lived in and visited have also had many cars. I suspect there is a place for personal cars, deprioritised compared to buses and bikes, in most cities for many years to come. During that time there will need to be car parks. Those car parks should have solar panels on, along with pretty much all other buildings.
Many cities have already banned cars in their centers. It’s not a “what if”. It’s been done and works. And it takes as long to build those garages as it’d take to build those solar parks. And not like they couldn’t be done at the same time. Like instead of building solar over the car parks, why not spend the time and resources building them over warehouses and apartments?
I don’t know of any big cities that have banned cars from anything but small areas in their centres. I know that in my city, the centre of which is pedestrianised, nevertheless has many car parks, including two large park-and-ride facilities with large car parks that could have solar panels installed.
The reason to build them over car parks is because the ones being considered are surface-level, so any building work is cheaper and easier. And it also provides a benefit to users in the form of shade.
Ultimately we should indeed aim to cover rooves with solar panels, but let’s focus on the lowest-hanging fruit.
The USA has a stupid relationship with car parks, yes, but I’m not American and I’m not encouraging car parks at all, I just think we should put the space where they already exist and are actually useful to better use.
Ideally, yes, we’d have much better public transit infrastructure but it’d need to be every ten minutes on every route and not stop overnight or for Sundays or public holidays for it to be a viable replacement for a car for me. Which is very feasible in a big city but not so much out in the countryside.
Ultimately, some people will either always need personal cars (or perhaps some other solution, but no public transit I’ve ever seen will do it) for a huge variety of reasons, including disabilities and house locations (and I don’t mean suburbia, that’s generally solvable with public transit and also generally a bad idea).
OK, so in 100 years you get your wish and personal cars no longer exist. For the next 100 years, would you like to:
In addition, after 100 years on top of the car parks that still exist (perhaps for the shared cars), would you like to:
The only problem is adding solar to car parks will ensure that those car parks remain there. Surprised to see so much support for this in the solarpunk community of all places.
How about we get that wish in, say, 10 or 20 years instead of your strawman scenario? Transforming cities to be walkable/bikable does not take that long, if you’re serious about it.
You forget that people live also outside of cities. If you live in a town away from any city you need a car.
No I didn’t. First of all, forgetting and disregarding aren’t the same thing.
Second, living in a small town isn’t an excuse. Small towns are inherently walkable (due to being, ya know, small) unless you somehow manage to design them spectacularly wrong. And contrary to American belief, it is actually possible to provide rail transit to them: the US itself used to do it 100 years ago, and Japan still does.
Personal cars are going to be here for way longer than 20 years, but 20 years is still long enough to build a lot of solar panels, so the same questions still arise. What will your answer be?
Tops of buildings, over canals, may be even over roads and rail.
It isn’t that far out of reach that a car park gets covered in solar panels, then the next developer reuses them when redeveloping the site for denser development.
That’s a false dichotomy. I can choose a third option. Where we place car parking garages (multi-level above or underground) all around ring roads and ban cars from entering city centers. Then we put solar panels on top of most roofs, and in fields for grazing animals.
This obsession with car parks is exclusively American.
So you want to demolish all the car parks that already exist? All of them, tomorrow? Don’t you think it will take some time before the builders can come and replace the last car park in your country with whatever it’s going to be replaced with? During that time, would it not be better to put solar panels on it? (And then remove them before it gets demolished and put them somewhere else)
I am not American, I just think it’s a stupid criticism of such a plan that we “shouldn’t have cars and therefore shouldn’t have car parks” because the fact is that we already do have them so we may as well use them as best we can.
In any case I don’t agree on a total ban on cars entering city centres, at least not in the foreseeable future. The most bike-friendly cities I have lived in and visited have also had many cars. I suspect there is a place for personal cars, deprioritised compared to buses and bikes, in most cities for many years to come. During that time there will need to be car parks. Those car parks should have solar panels on, along with pretty much all other buildings.
Many cities have already banned cars in their centers. It’s not a “what if”. It’s been done and works. And it takes as long to build those garages as it’d take to build those solar parks. And not like they couldn’t be done at the same time. Like instead of building solar over the car parks, why not spend the time and resources building them over warehouses and apartments?
I don’t know of any big cities that have banned cars from anything but small areas in their centres. I know that in my city, the centre of which is pedestrianised, nevertheless has many car parks, including two large park-and-ride facilities with large car parks that could have solar panels installed.
The reason to build them over car parks is because the ones being considered are surface-level, so any building work is cheaper and easier. And it also provides a benefit to users in the form of shade.
Ultimately we should indeed aim to cover rooves with solar panels, but let’s focus on the lowest-hanging fruit.
The USA has a stupid relationship with car parks, yes, but I’m not American and I’m not encouraging car parks at all, I just think we should put the space where they already exist and are actually useful to better use.
Ideally, yes, we’d have much better public transit infrastructure but it’d need to be every ten minutes on every route and not stop overnight or for Sundays or public holidays for it to be a viable replacement for a car for me. Which is very feasible in a big city but not so much out in the countryside.
Ultimately, some people will either always need personal cars (or perhaps some other solution, but no public transit I’ve ever seen will do it) for a huge variety of reasons, including disabilities and house locations (and I don’t mean suburbia, that’s generally solvable with public transit and also generally a bad idea).