When Joni Mitchell sang “They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot,” she was calling out big corporations and capitalist greed. But her words also speak to other problems with parking lots: mandated parking minimum laws, one of the driving forces behind how much pavement we add to our landscapes. Parking lots are killing us; they’re not only destroying “paradise,” but they also negatively impact the health and wellness of our waterways, our communities, and our very own lives. They contribute to environmental disaster and poor health outcomes all across North America, making this an issue that is important for all of us to address.
The Problem with Parking Lot Minimums
If you’ve driven to your local grocery store lately, you may notice that much of the parking lot is going unused, especially those spots that are furthest away from the store. Or maybe as you pick up your fast food from the drive-thru, you see 20 open spaces that you can park your car in while you eat at your convenience. If you’re observant, you’ll notice that your local bowling alley, place of worship, and strip mall all may have an exorbitant amount of parking spaces near them. What’s striking is that the number of these spaces is purely arbitrary; and not based on any real calculation of how much parking an institution may actually need.
Parking minimum laws specific to each city determine how many parking spaces a place like a bowling alley or grocery store needs. In one city, a bowling alley may be mandated to have 50 parking spaces, while 30 miles away, that same sized bowling alley may get 75-100. There’s no standardized formula for determining this number, which can lead to parking lots that are much larger than they ever needed to be.
Ecological Consequences of Parking Lots
We’ve taken away much of Earth’s natural defense against heat, the “number one weather-related killer,”and replaced it with pavement.
As long as we have cars, we need parking lots. However, big parking lots, or unused asphalt, create a lot of problems for us and our environment. Not the least of which being that parking minimums significantly change the layout of our towns, spreading businesses and amenities further apart. This forces people to rely either on underfunded public transportation systems or personal vehicles to get around. Still, the most glaring issue is the heat these spaces retain. 2024 was the hottest year on record for the U.S., and cities continue to suffer from the “Urban heat island effect”. This effect states that urban areas are significantly hotter than rural areas surrounding them. The lack of tree canopy and greenspaces within cities means the heat that would otherwise be absorbed by trees, prairies, and floodplains, is being bounced right back into the atmosphere. We’ve taken away much of Earth’s natural defense against heat, the “number one weather-related killer,”and replaced it with pavement.
In addition to intense overheating, these lots also harm our waterways. Many contribute to pollution by channeling all trash, salt, and toxins directly into our creeks and rivers. The storm drains you see in parking lots or along the sides of roads go directly into our natural waterways, which are often sources of our drinking water. Sensitive plants and animals, like trout or walleye, that need clean and cold streams cannot survive in warmer and polluted waters.
Parking lots not only contribute to contamination, but they also play a significant role in flooding. Massive areas of impermeable pavement have no way of allowing water to soak through into the soil. Instead, the water is channeled into storm drains, which flow directly into our waterways at high speeds. In a healthy ecosystem, water is able to percolate into the soil, recharge aquifers, and feed plants. Without the ability to do this, massive intakes of water breach riverbanks, causing mass destruction. Where there once were forests, prairies, and floodplains to slow down and soak up all this water, we now have direct funnels into creeks and rivers that have themselves been constrained by development.
The Health Impacts of Pavement
Flooding, poor water quality, and excessive heat are only a few of the negative impacts of pavement in urban areas. The impacts extend even further to our own bodies. Contamination in waterways effects our water supply. Other dangers include an increase of cardiovascular disease, mental disorders, low birth weight, sleep problems, and increased crime rate related to lack of access to greenspace. Examples of greenspaces can be as big as Central Park in NYC, or as small as trees lining a street that provide enough shade. In its simplest form, it is nature amidst urban development. Greenspace benefits our health and wellness and access to greenspace contributes to the flourishing of everyone.
A community that has to face all of these risks and challenges is not set up for success. Developments and highways have historically been used to destroy and separate thriving communities, specifically those inhabited by BIPOC and low-income communities, who feel these impacts more strongly due to systemic issues. It’s these neighborhoods that are torn down first to build a highway, that are in closest proximity to superfund sites, and it’s these neighborhoods that get redlined, underfunded, and overlooked for investments in new greenspaces.
A Biblical Call to Steward Creation
Through his life and ministry, Jesus initiated the coming together of God’s kingdom and Earth, and he charged us, his people, with creatively bearing witness to his kingdom in the ways we are able.
As Christians, we are called to work towards this flourishing or “Shalom,” which Cornelius Plantinga Jr describes as “The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight.” We hear this call from Jesus when he heals the sick and the outcast to reconnect them to their communities (Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 5:25-34), or when Jesus teaches the beatitudes and outlines how we should live and relate to each other (Matthew 5:1-12). Through his life and ministry, Jesus initiated the coming together of God’s kingdom and Earth, and he charged us, his people, with creatively bearing witness to his kingdom in the ways we are able. So, what does it look like to seek Shalom, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, or to be peacemakers when it comes to parking lots?
Policy Solutions
We all have roles that we get to play in making this possible. The government in particular has a large part in addressing this issue, as “The government of a political community bears responsibility to legislate, enforce, and adjudicate public laws for the safety, welfare, and public order of everyone within its jurisdiction. The guiding norm, or principle, for such laws is public justice,” as stated by the Center for Public Justice’s Guidelines for Government. One simple thing that can be done in this situation is to abolish mandated parking minimums. Local governments across North America have already begun to do this. According to the Parking Reform Network, 88 cities throughout the U.S. have removed all parking minimum requirements, with even more that have made significant improvements to allow for more walkable downtown districts and to promote cities centered around people, rather than cars.
When a local government abolishes these laws, there’s no more need for the number of parking spaces to be based on an arbitrary number. Rather, it can be based on market demands. If a downtown area provides free curb-side parking, then of course demand for this is going to be extremely high at prime times. But if you raise the cost slightly, or extend hours in which paid parking is required, this will help to increase flow and availability. Those who can’t afford it or aren’t willing to deal with the hassle of finding an available parking space, will be more motivated to walk, bike, or utilize public transportation, which could lead to greater investment in public transport options or biking and walking infrastructure.
Abolishing parking minimums doesn’t mean that parking lots need to go away; rather, it allows for more freedom and flexibility in how we shape our communities.
Another benefit of this market-driven approach to parking lot development is that it can protect small businesses from paying significantly more to install or maintain a large parking lot that they don’t need. If a business can’t afford to expand a parking lot to the mandated minimum, they won’t have to. This reduces costs for developers, which can sometimes mean the difference between a small business existing or not. The price of developing a parking lot also raises housing costs in the surrounding area, so not doing so will benefit residents by reducing the cost of living as well.
Abolishing parking minimums doesn’t mean that parking lots need to disappear; rather, it allows for more freedom and flexibility in how we shape our communities. It can lead to denser city-hubs rather than sprawling urban landscapes that become impossible to navigate without a vehicle. Some may argue that this makes parking more difficult, but it can be a motivator for people to take public transportation in and out of the city-center if unable to pay market-rate parking prices.*
Individual Responsibility and Creative Reuse of Parking Lots
While local governments have a responsibility to promote the welfare of the people they serve, we also have a unique responsibility as individuals. Many of us belong to institutions, houses of worship, schools, or other organizations that have their own parking lots. Many schools are closed during the summer, leaving an unused lot to bake in the sun. And the highest-intensity times a church would need to fully utilize its parking lot are likely on Sundays. What about the businesses you visit or the company where you work? Are their parking lots used on weekends? And how many of these lots are ever filled to capacity? For the good of our neighbors and communities; for the good of those in low-income urban areas who are more drastically impacted by the harmful effects of pavement; for the good of our environment, it’s crucial to imagine more creative uses for these spaces that we steward.
In my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, we experience all of these problems that I’ve mentioned, but it’s been heartening to see solutions being implemented. One example is a parking lot downtown alongside the Grand River that is now also used as a skate park, skating rink, community event center, art hub, movie theater, community garden extravaganza, and more. This space has been reimagined and repurposed to provide life and joy to the community.
Another example of reimagining spaces involves my own work with a local watershed group called Plaster Creek Stewards (PCS). Over the past year, I have served with them to install native plant gardens, increase watershed health, and provide education to the community about actions they can take to do their part. One of my favorite ongoing projects is a parking lot retrofit on Calvin University’s campus. PCS was able to remove 6,500 square feet of pavement from an underused parking lot, and an engineered plan involving native plants and sediment capture systems was installed. This bioswale now captures all the runoff from the parking lot, absorbing it into the soil. The native plants have roots that penetrate deep into the earth to soak up water, slow it down, and filter it out. Water that once flowed right into the creek, filled with salt and other toxins, is now being cleaned and filtered out, contributing to increased water quality in the watershed. I visited this bioswale many times this summer to perform maintenance on it, and found nesting birds, butterflies, caterpillars, flowering plants, and flowing grasses all throughout.
PCS now has two similar upcoming projects. One involves a church parking lot directly adjacent to a creek that flows into Plaster Creek. The back portion of the lot will be removed, and a rain garden will be installed. This project was voted on by the church members, who all agreed that this was a better use of the property that they steward. The other project is with a local business owner who has a small lot that rarely gets full. All of these projects are funded by grants, but they needed community participation to imagine and push them forward.
All Creatures of Our God and King
Though parking lots are the source of much social and environmental harm, there are ways their presence in our lives can be redeemed and restored. The ecological impacts are dire, especially for urban communities that are facing environmental and health risks. To create resilient landscapes and communities for the future, where all human flourishing is possible, we first need to stop paving so many parking lots. It is important to encourage your local representatives and commissioners to eliminate parking minimum mandates. But we also need to reimagine the uses for the pavement that’s already in place.
Rain gardens are one example of how we can introduce greenspace, provide habitat, manage stormwater pollution, and reduce heat in our communities. Partnering with your local conservation groups can help make this a reality. There are also countless other ways to repurpose these spaces, turning them into more community-centered areas that serve as reconnection points. Our responsibility is to care for our earth and our neighbors.
Seeking Shalom for pavement-covered, warming, and polluted communities ultimately means reconciling the relationship between people and the land. Can you imagine a world where coldwater fish return to our streams, people are protected by shade during the hot summers, and gardens begin to grow where pavement used to boil? Can you imagine children breathing clean air and playing in healthy streams, free from worry? Imagining healthier cities, healthier people, and a healthier creation is a hopeful act, one rooted in love for God and for our neighbors. The flourishing of all does not exclude anyone, in fact it requires everyone. All of creation, singing together in harmony. Instead of paving paradise, let’s work to restore one.
*If you’d like to learn more about all of the intricacies of parking minimums and how they affect our cities, start with this video from the Youtube channel “Climate Town” or read this guide from Strong Towns, a nationwide organization focused on making reforms to make our cities more resilient.
Jacob Bol graduated in 2020 from Calvin University with a degree in social work and is now pursuing environmental justice through local conservation efforts. He has a passion for native plants, prescribed burns, and natural garden design that he hopes to continue nurturing and sharing with others.
