Enormous Parking Lots of the US: The 10 Most Sprawling Car Parks and Why They Exist
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- Опубликовано: 22 фев 2022
- There may be no greater indication of car dependency in the United States than the sheer number of massive parking craters that litter our cities, creating dead zones for urban activity and motor-vehicle choked streets. Bulk private vehicle storage in all its forms is fundamentally anti-urbanist, but space-hogging surface parking is probably the worst. In this video we survey the largest parking lots in the US, discuss why they exist in the places they do, and talk about the kind of planning and analysis that leads to them getting built.
Join your intrepid host in a nationwide search for mammoth examples of some of the most wasteful land uses ever devised -- we check the usual suspects: airports, manufacturing facilities, large sports venues, theme parks, and casinos. Play along and see if you can guess what shows up in the top ten. But prepare to be surprised!
Other CityNerd videos referenced in this video:
- Top 10 Transit to NFL Stadiums: • Top Ten Transit to NFL...
- Top 10 Ginormous Interchanges: • Top 10 GINORMOUS Freew...
Other Resources:
- Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generation and Parking Generation Resources: www.ite.org/technical-resourc...
- "The Ugly, Violent Clearing Of Chavez Ravine Before It Was Home To The Dodgers" by Elina Shatkin for LAist: laist.com/news/la-history/dod...
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
- NASCAR tracks (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
- The Astrodome (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrodo...
- NFL Stadiums (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
- Largest Shopping Malls (Wikipedia):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
- American Football Stadiums (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
- 2016 Battle at Bristol (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...
- ESPN 2016 Battle at Bristol game page: www.espn.com/college-football...
Photo/Video Credits:
- 2016_Pilot_Flying_J_Battle_at_Bristol By UserB - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Jackie Robinson Image by Welcome to all and thank you for your visit ! ツ from Pixabay
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Former long-time Houstonian here. Turning the Astrodome into a parking garage is both tragic and the most Houston thing I've ever heard.
i will never understand why our cities are so gungho on being stupid with its land
I went to a game at NRG, which I walked to, and I never saw the Astrodome.
Finally
The City of Houston is the largest
Yes. We're a freeway and a parking lot with a few buildings thrown in, and some tacos.
I have designed thousands of parking spaces in the Houston area. All driven by local codes. Required parking spaces for the worst case scenario. What is wrong with a full parking lot of the business is busy?
@@grmpEqweer Yeah, I'm sure if we want to focus it, Katy Freeway at 8 AM is actually the #1 parking lot
@@clayton97330
Yes.
@@clayton97330 Don't sell the SW Freeway short, pardner!
To my mind, the most insane thing about those parking areas is the amount of WALKING you have to do if you're not there early.
Walking good. Driving bad. Nothing worse than seeing a shuttle on a hiking trail. It's like HELLO...
I don't understand why there's not more multi level carparks?
@@louiscypher4186 If you build a parking lot, you just buy the land and pave it over. There are very few regulations you need to live up to. Land is cheap as is paving it over. And the maintenance you need to do is absolutely minimal.
If you build a multilevel car park, you now have to live up to a bunch of building regulations. Building materials are rather expensive, as is the labour cost for designing it, building it and maintaining it.
Yeah like most of americans are overweight, do the ones who can't walk half a mile just take mobility scooters out of the back of their pickup trucks? Where's the mobility scooter parking?
@@dmrfnk That might explain why pickups are so popular.
Philly resident here: those stadiums take up a ridiculous amount of space. If they weren’t there, actual south Philly (one of America’s densest and most walkable neighborhoods) would be almost 50% larger.
The broad street line dead ends down there but it's still several long blocks away from any of the stadiums. Like why???
Put all the parking in garages, get rid of about half of it at the same time, get good SEPTA to each stadium separately...
Thank you. Your deadpan delivery is impeccable. I actually burst out laughing during the line about the factory defect khakis. It just so perfectly encapsulates the suburban, car-centric lifestyle that it's almost too on-the-nose.
Love the delivery and humor!🤓
Also love the humor so much! My dad died in 2009 and it reminds me of my banter with him ❤
In relation to college stadiums, while it absolutely has to do with a vast number of college students not owning cars, another key factor that some may not consider is that college stadiums tend to be a LOT older then professional sports venues. For instance, the stadium you showed in the video (The Big House at U of M, my Alma Mater) was built in 1927, possibly predating some of the worst city designing ideals of driving everywhere. But other then that I would definitely point to college students simply walking. Ann Arbor roads on game days are pretty much impassable due to the sea of people walking to the game.
College stadiums being older is a huge point. The biggest stadium near me is the Yale Bowl, which is over 100 years old.
They park thousands of cars on the golf course across from Michigan Stadium unless the turf is too wet.
Than* wouldn’t have said anything but you did it twice… but also good point
Good points. For the record, I think the most parking I found at a college stadium was Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge...unless you want to count Snapdragon, where San Diego State is now the primary tenant!
In every college town I have been to, you can find a lot of parking at local businesses being used as charity fundraisers on game days. So that parking at least is being offloaded to other businesses that use it the rest of the days of the year
I mean, the obvious reason that college stadiums don't make the list is because much of the attending audience are students who will typically live within walking distance and/or don't have cars. Additionally, per your best small city public transit video, college towns seem to have pretty decent transit options despite their size.
yeah. the shoe is a pain in the ass to park at. especially compared to the arena district
Exactly.
While what you said is true, less than half of the people there are students. I mean, look Ohio Stadium. It fits almost 103,000 and is on the largest single college campus, with only 47,000 undergrad at the Columbus campus. I don't know the parking situation, but look at Notre Dame stadium. It's much smaller at _only_ around 77,500, but the university only has 8,700 undergrad.
I live in Knoxville TN, home of UT’s Neyland Stadium (102,400 capacity, built in 1921). The majority of people attending games aren’t students and there is very little parking attached to the stadium. But its located within walking distance of downtown so fans use the parking lots that are located throughout the area. It works fine and it proves that having huge dedicated parking lots for stadiums is unnecessary and dumb.
A whole reason why I loved going to college. Even though I lived at and still had to drive to campus I stayed all day as school. Walking to clases, going across the street to grab lunch and when class is over for the day I’ll go to a bar to grab some drinks and back to library to study and you know what also catch a game before going home. Mostly spend all day walking and was more enjoyable then driving back home for the next 40 minutes
I've been to a Nascar race and it is fun, and largely a carnival atmosphere. Compared to football games I'd say there's more focus on the overpriced shops in the arena and drinking with the friends you go with than the race itself except at certain dramatic moments. I get some of the appeal given the hold car culture has on a lot of Americans but personally I do prefer the experience of team sports in arenas (American football, hockey, basketball, soccer, etc). Though those speedways aren't 100% useless between races! There's often museums or special events or just letting people drive real fast on the track. For instance, when I was kid (no idea if it's still done) Charlotte motor speedway used to do a Christmas village and folks could drive through the track looking at the lights. It's pretty bad land use in non-rural areas most of the time, but not quite as dire as just looking at race day schedules.
That said, the parking gets so ridiculous that folks need shuttles to get from the far lots to the arena on some of these. And if you need a car so you can get from your car to your destination, I think something has gone very wrong in your transport system.
CMS does still do Christmas lights. In a limited defense- it’s 14 miles from Uptown Charlotte and would have been very rural in 1960 when it opened. Now there is a dirt track and a drag strip all on the site and a bunch of car dealers up and down the road connecting it to I-85. It’s pretty much peak car culture in a few square miles.
Walking through Christmas lights would be more fun for me. Just my personal opinion. Not sure where that is doable here.
@@guangxiwu Walking might be nicer, but the other big christmas lights attraction in the area is this subdivision called McAdenville and every december tons of people come to see the lights by slowing driving past them. North Carolinians are pretty addicted to their cars.
Thanks for the explanation and description. They do Xmas lights at Portland (OR) International Raceway too (which is actually surprisingly high on the racetrack spectator capacity list) -- and they open it for bikes only occasionally (very Portland).
@@CityNerd An interesting note about PIR - It's built on what was formerly Vanport, Oregon, a public housing community built for GIs during and after World War II. It was destroyed on Memorial Day, 1948 when a dam burst and flooded the entire town with water from the Columbia River, leaving only the paved roads and building foundations. Racing began on the abandoned streets in the early 60s and became more permanent soon after.
This probably wouldn't make it on a list of the biggest lots, but Nissan Stadium in Nashville is particularly wasteful because of its location. Huge parking lot despite being a stone's throw away from the downtown core and having a decent pedestrian connection (John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge).
There's also some decently walkable East Nashville neighborhoods in the other direction from the stadium.
If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a stop for the proposed light rail project there, but somehow the Koch Brothers lobbied for it to be shut down. Oh well.
Yeah, I did look at that -- pretty bad, and the way Nashville is going...super valuable land!
This could have been used at least to use the other way around, as a parking facility for all the tourists visiting Nashville, which would leave opportunities to reduce traffic in downtown and redevelop the parking lots there. But it looks like they don't allow anyone on those lots when there's no game, which it probably 98% of the time and makes it even more ridiculous.
@@feliko5373 just pitch it to them as potential income generating enterprise, they'll start it in no time.
@@ianhomerpura8937 nah, nobody would pay for parking if they'd still have to walk 10 min across a bridge. This would have to be free or at least very cheap to keep a few cars from circling forever in downtown streets trying to find a parking spot there. The signs at those lots say "government property, no trespassing". It may take a lot of effort for a government to actually generate income, and they'll probably make more from ticketing or towing 1 or 2 vehicles a day.
The stadium and parking lot you mentioned in San Diego no longer exists as it was demolished over the last few years. The whole area is being redeveloped into an expansion of San Diego State University, but they're also building a new smaller stadium too. And yes, the area before the redevelopment was a disaster.
Thank god they’re reworking the whole stadium area, it was such a giant scab on San Diego.
Drove by it today. New stadium is in a slightly different spot. The huge parking lot has been reconstructed as far as I could tell.
Wait really the Padres are leaving?
@@bootmii98 its the chargers that left. We're talking Qualcomm->snapdragon. Not petco park. I think everyone is happy with petco park. One of the best baseball park experiences
@@twjackson94SDSU will eventually replace all that surface parking with 4600 apartments/condos, 1.6 M sq ft office space, and a 400 room hotel
“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot…”
I had no idea how vast those parking areas can actually be.
I assume the difference in approach to having a sports arena in Europe compared to North America is that when space is limited another solution is found to getting customers to the venue - namely public transit. Having large open areas available doesn’t mean they should be used thoughtlessly.
Everything is different over there. The European stadiums that have "a lot of parking" (like Juventus) have very small parking footprints compared to US stadiums.
Yeah and l love the sudden and colorful chance in ambience that happens on public transportation when thirty drunken and chanting football fans pile onto the tram carriage that l happen to be sitting in while reading a book. Still, l suppose that a little annoyance is in fact a marginally better societal outcome than having to share roads with the same people and then potentially being an uninvited guest of the local emergency ward after meeting one at high speed.
Is that an Eagles quote from the last resort?
It’s from “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell, a Canadian singer-songwriter.
@@SofaKingShit the American way is to have those 30 drunken chanting fans drive home instead
Definitely recommend the book The High Cost of Free Parking, the author does a great job looking over the problems with the ITE parking manuals you mention.
Also in regards to Dodger Stadium, I parked at the metro station in downtown LA, and walked the 2-3 miles. It's an interesting experience, as it requires crossing a freeway, and then walking through desolate parking lots to get there. The freeway area is also depressing because you can see how it tore through the Chinatown area leaving a portion separate from the other, with only a tall walkway over a loud freeway to get between them.
That book was good for its time, but IIRC, it makes some pretty bad logical errors. There are lots of possible ways to reduce cars and parking spots, but working hard at it isn’t apparently interesting to most planners, politicians, or voters. If it’s not easy, or something that we can’t just make other people pay some other people to fix for us, no one is interested anymore.
The Dodger Express bus is free and takes you right from Union station to Chavez, I reccomend
That book has some of the least readable prose I've ever encountered, and repeats itself a lot. It's hard read, and not something I'd recommend to someone new to all of this.
@@travelsofmunch1476 Exactly! Take it from Union Station. But yes, Dodger Stadium sits in a sea of parking spaces
High rise parking doesn't take as much space, but the amount of concrete, steel, iron, etc. to build them? Crazy too.
Toronto's Yorkdale mall has a parking lot so huge that it could house a densely populated medium sized city of a few hundred thousand people within it's borders. It's stupid because the city has always been extremely expensive when it comes to housing/business costs and there is a lot of valuable land that isn't being used as retail/residential space.
Dude what? It’s true that Yorkdale is an absolute monstrosity of urban planning but it’s not that big.
A bunch of malls in the GTA already have plans to redevelop portions of their land for condos or apartments including Yorkdale, Scarborough Town Centre, Square One, and Sherway Gardens.
You know that some malls have bigger lots than Yorkdale...
The astrodome is a place of historical lore in Houston. One time I visited a friend’s house and discovered that he had 2 seats from the astrodome serving as seating in his living room… apparently years ago the astrodome underwent renovations and the old seats were auctioned off to the public, and he nabbed two 😂
"I'm not sure if this is the best use of urban land"
Being fair, virtually every race track listed was rural land well outside the city when they where built, much like most airports where, but as time went on urban sprawl reached them.
The point is that the entire area is barren save for some shrubbery and grass. They could have transformed the area into a nature reserve.
@@lunayen America already has nature preserves the size of countries
@@ZontarDow
So? There is no sch thing as too many nature reserves, specially if the land is surrounded by a structure that serves no purpose.
@@lunayen track serves a purpose
I have a few video suggestions.
1. Cities with the most egregious approach to parking, where huge chunks of valuable city centre land have been given over to car parking. You could assess it by the area used, the proximity to rapid transit, the value of the land and your own subjective judgment of what alternatives could have been put there instead.
2. Multi-story car parks vs surface car parks. An analysis of the efficiency (or lack thereof) of both and perhaps an assessment of how many floors multi story car parks need to have to be efficient.
3. Should any freeways/motorways have junctions removed for efficiency and which ones? I’m sure some motorways and freeways have too many junctions which compromises efficiency and worsens (I think) induced demand effects so a video on this would be interesting.
4. How would London work as an independent country? A bit of a silly hypothetical question but interesting to think about, you could focus on the internal an external transit and logistical systems London would need if it was independent.
I know that’s a lot about car parks but I think it’s one of the worst misuses of land in many cities and some nerdyness on it would be quite useful.
Love the channel and your work. Please keep it up!
Lots of interesting stuff here -- some of it dovetails with stuff I already have on my list, but I'll add your suggestions!
@@CityNerd thanks! Your channel really helps add a bit more intellectual rigour to the intuitive but often vague arguments surrounding urban land use and transport policy.
The Miami Hard Rock Stadiums parking lot is in fact large enough to hold an entire race track for the F1 Miami Grand Prix. I wonder which parking lot they're going to use for the Grand Prix.
The entire, I think some tennis fields may be destroyed
Huge NASCAR fan here! It’s definitely a fun experience even for non-racing fans. It’s like going to a festival. The lots are full of campers and tailgaters over a 3 day weekend. There’s all kinds of activities and booths set up by sponsors outside the track. Most tracks let you bring your own beer and food. The experience of watching the race live itself is amazing, feeling the rumble of the cars and the sheer speed. It’s not for everyone obviously, but I love it and everything about the weekend. Some tracks also use the land during the year for music festivals and other large events, and the tracks host bring-your-own-car track days, historical and regional racing events, etc. When tracks close the land either sits totally vacant as the track rots away (Nazareth Speedway), or gets turned into yet another expansive cookie cutter neighborhood (Texas World Speedway). Theres also plans to convert Auto Club Speedway from a 2 mile oval to a half mile oval like Bristol and turn the excess land into more industrial park usage. Also Indianapolis Motor Speedway (built in 1909) was there long before the suburbs got built up around it and it’s a huge part of the regional economy being a global destination on race weekends (the Indy 500 and all it’s festivities is a 3 week affair, plus it has NASCAR, motorcycle, sports car races, etc throughout the year). Race tracks further away from urban areas are often the backbone of local economies that rely on the hotel and restaurant revenue a race weekend brings. Anyway. Just a rambling of thoughts. I love your videos! Hope I could provide some good perspective :)
Id love to see a list of the top 10 water front highways in North America. It always makes me sad how many beautiful locations like that are wasted on ugly land uses like highways rather than parks houses etc.
post-earthquake boulevarded Embarcadero
I went to a race at Texas Motor Speedway. It was an experience. Such a huge event. Getting in wasn't too big a deal, but getting out afterwards was a nightmare. You are right that I don't think a lot of people in the country understand the scale of NASCAR fandom. NASCAR itself is in dire financial straits due to a couple decades trying with limited success to grow out of their traditional base.
Yeah, egress from sporting events is the worst. Traffic control nightmare. Wonder why NASCAR's struggling to grow...seems F1 is rising in profile. Wanted to include the Austin F1 track in this video but it didn't really fit.
@@CityNerd They felt there was a large potential from "casual NASCAR fans" and invested a ton to attract them, especially outside of their historic base in the South. Turns out they greatly over estimated the casual fans' appetite to traveling great distances, spend weekends at the track, buy merchandise, etc. I grew up in the North Carolina and, while I was never really into it, I can vouch for the depth of fandom there, though even those traditional fans are disillusioned with the push NASCAR made to become a national sport. It is an interesting business case study.
@@knutthompson7879 As a NASCAR fan, I'll give my perspective as to why NASCAR is struggling: they're trying to be like stick-and-ball sports. They implemented a playoff format a few years ago. It makes no sense in a sport where every team competes with each other every week, and tracks can be vastly different in size and shape. If a driver is bad at a certain track in the playoffs, Too bad. They can be eliminated, even if they're great at every other type of track. The playoffs alienated those of us who liked to watch drivers rack up points throughout a season, and think the championship should be awarded to the driver with the most points at the end of the season (the way it used to be).
@@DylanDFW I agree. The playoff thing is confusing and complicates what used to be simple. I am not sure what is supposed to add. Fake excitement I guess. They are being too cute.
I like to imagine you talking to a crowd of thousands of cheering spectators when you mention the sub count, it seems really exciting!
I'd like to see you do videos diving into case studies of urban planning where you go through your own process of how to improve or fix a subpar built environment.
Ugh, City Beautiful just did that for the Vegas Strip! I don't think that's my niche...but I'll keep it in mind if an opportunity arises. Thanks!
As a Parisian it is really funny and nice to see your use of Parisian metro numbers for your top 10s. Anyway, thanks for your videos, they are always entertaining and fun!
So thankful for this channel. Its refreshing to listen to your takes on these topics. Please keep making videos.
One video series I would love to see is if you picked a city, or a neighborhood within a city, and made specific suggestions about how it could be improved with mass transit.
Just an fyi for San Diego when the Chargers left voters approved the land for San Diego State University West, with a lot of development occuring in the future. Not perfect but a major improvement.
Couple thoughts on college football stadiums. Most utilize campus parking (which probably makes these the most used of any stadium parking) which is typically scattered across any big campus based on where students/faculty are during school hours. Also, when universities want to expand, which many of the big ones do pretty frequently, they often target parking lots which means that any big surface lot is really just a giant target for the next new research building.
Absolutely brilliant point, how it makes a difference when the same entity has a choice in how they use their land, versus an entity that only has a use for it as parking.
UCSD has been expanding super rapidly. They've been removing parking lots left and right for new colleges and new buildings, but then just shifting parking to the other side of the 5 freeway, or basically forcing students to park in residential neighborhoods in nearby La Jolla. At least the new light rail got built recently and there's reasonable bus access to the campus.
You are including a lot of non-parking areas in your raceway stats. For example, about 50 acres of paved surface outside of Texas Motor Speedway is for staging, vending, and rides for Cowtown Fair. About 130 acres of pavement are for 'parking' and that includes the RV camping and tailgating
areas (there are 20k paved parking spaces there and a lot more could fit into 130 acres). I also noticed you included an a large go-cart track in the "parking area" for TMS.
Just a quick note with Angel's Stadium, the city of Anaheim recently sold the property to private developers and they have put forward a plan to redevelop the parking lot into a mixed use area. The plan looks super interesting and will be a much better use of land here in Orange County. They even have a similar plan for the Honda Center which is within a mile of the Angel's Stadium.
Same story with San Diego and our upcoming mixed use "stadium lot" currently demolished and a lot of dirt!
Honda Ponda is way better than the Big A, I hope they figure it out.
That's such an interesting area with the ARTIC too. I actually enjoy going to games at that stadium! (Even though the Angels are hated rivals)
I've been to a handful of NASCAR races and am a diehard fan (yet still in the War on Cars somehow...). Those campgrounds are really used as campgrounds. People will drive in their RVs and camp out by the track all weekend. The vibe at NASCAR events is similar to any other pro sports event happening in a stadium surrounded by parking lots. However less an emphasis on tailgating and more on merchandise haulers and other pre-race fan events. I am proud to say I went to a NASCAR event at the LA Coliseum a few weeks ago and took the LA Metro there.
Regarding SnapDragon Stadium in San Diego, that whole property was bought by San Diego State and is being redeveloped. It will have a new smaller football stadium, campus extension buildings, retail, residential, and a riverfront park on the south by the trolley station. Still probably will have too much parking, but will mostly be in garages and underground.
I live near the Meadowlands/Met Life Stadium. It is indeed a huge parking area. Much of the mall was parking for the Arena, and was made into space for garage multi-level parking space. As to the Arena, it is mainly used now for sets for TV shows and movies. One idea is to make it convention space. There is also train service for major events at Met Life Arena with a NJ Transit station close to and on part of the parking lot for the Stadium. There is also NJ Transit bus service to the mall and horse racetrack/sports betting parlour.
Video suggestion: I’d love to hear your thoughts on traffic circles / roundabouts - especially in dense and high-traffic areas.
Me too but I expect that like most urban planners he would support them as they are really useful sometimes.
How about a 'top ten U.S. suburbs for public transit' ? If you don't want the big city, but you still hanna get to it, and around your own town car-free, try these suburbs!! Big fan of your unique urban planning content by the way! :)
Oh, that's an interesting idea! Nice
I wonder if any philly suburbs would be on this list. there are some bad suburbs around Philly, but SEPTA is pretty suburban friendly with a bunch of "local" bus routes and trains going right into the suburbs as well as 3 SEPTA rail lines (not sure what to call the NHSL, an interurban?), situated completely outside the city limits.
New Hope and its sister town Lambertville. Everyone walks walks over the bridge
May I suggest a video on city center airports around the world? Examples include London City, Tokyo Haneda, Taipei Songshan, etc.
Shoutout to Edmonton for having an NHL arena (Rogers Place) and a CFL stadium (Commonwealth Stadium) with surface parking smaller than the footprint of the buildings themselves, and multiple adjacent transit options for each.
also to mention the extension (but still in construction) of the lrt that will have a station from wem to downtown
great video as always!
I went to University of Michigan and for gamedays you're either a student who just walked the less-than-a-mile to get there, or you're a real person who parked anywhere you could find parking and then walked or took a blue bus (which are free). I remember going there and wondering where everyone parked. Well.. except those who parked at the adjacent high school or golf course.
Yeah, Michigan football games always bus fans in from further away parking. The mall was a big spot.
So, you don't actually see the parking since it's far from the stadium.
Nebraska has a similar arrangement for it's football stadium. They shuttle people in from public school parking lots. This actually makes sense since no one is using those parking lots on Saturday
Hey Nerd. Have you done an episode on best bicycle infrastructure? Walking infrastructure? Who has the best sidewalks? Would love to see where my town ranks with those. Your vids are really good. Fun to watch. Keep 'em coming.
Sorry, the top 10 spots are already taken by 10 (random) dutch cities. 🤗
I like the way you include other fun, relevant interesting facts and stats as you do the list. It's so much more than just a run down a series of items on a list, it's extra tidbits for me to Google as I watch!
Glad it's appreciated! I run into so many weird tidbits that I can't imagine not sharing.
I love your sense of humor and delivery
NRG Park (formerly the Astrodomain) has a long history with its parking lot. Look up some of the images when the Astrodome first opened and it’s truly a masterplan-albeit most of the “interestingness” comes from the circular parking lot. It was always a shared parking lot with Astroworld also using it until it shuddered.
The parking lots themselves are somewhat “multipurpose” with the biggest examples being Music Festivals (Astroworld or Houston Free Press for examples) and for hosting the largest rodeo in the world (where it essentially turns into a fairground and people *have* to take transit in or park on the relatively small former site of Astroworld).
The Astrodome itself has been saved as a historic landmark for the state, but no one can agree what to turn it into. The parking garage idea will supposedly be entirely beneath the building, and was supposed to include a convention center/multipurpose area, but that’s probably never getting off the ground. Other proposals include turning it into a vertical urban park, an indoor theme park, a museum, a hotel…in the end it’ll probably end up some kind of public space, and they’re supposed to release those plans this year, but who knows.
Funnily enough, there was a satirical competition put on by Architect’s Newspaper in 2013 (you can still find it under the name “Reimagining the Astrodome”) where the winning submission “Filling the Dome and Reclaiming Turf” proposed turning the inside of the dome into a 13,000-space, spiraled parking garage and turning the existing parking lots into greenspace. I personally think the second place proposal “The Houston Ark” was the funniest and best.
Oh man, I'm going to have to look that up. Awesome
"shuddered" funny if intentional hilarious if you think that is correct.
I'm a NASCAR nerd yet I love urbanism, please do not throw pitchforks at me.
The Texas Motor Speedway now holds about 110,000, the number you stated is what they used to hold. That place back in the early 2000s would house 220,000 spectators between grandstand seating and infield camping.
Kentucky Speedway is not hosting raising events anymore.
The Bristol night race is a ton of fun and a great time.
You are not wrong about how absurd the vast parking can be
Yet another banger 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻
I really enjoy your channel and content CityNerd, and really appreciate your sarcastic sense of humour. I'm in Australia, so our major cities, they are really dense in the urban core with beautiful Edwardian and Victorian buildings, and new sky scrapers but you almost never seen on-street parking. After WW2, a lot of suburbs began to be built, but now that style of living has gone out of fashion and single family homes aren't desirable unless you're a new buyer and don't mind living in the sprawling suburbs. That said, a lot of our older suburbs are now filling up with new apartment buildings. We didn't go down the same path as North America and we kept our extensive rail services, which are a lot like the s-bahn systems in Germany. Now real estate near metro stations is worth a fortune so developers always build huge apartment towers around the stations.
Montréal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a good example of how to build a Nascar/formula 1 venue. It's located on an artificial island close to downtown and the parking is almost nonexistent, but there's a metro station on the other island and they pedestrianise the bridge for the weekend to deal with foot traffic. The track is also used as a cycle/walking path during other times
Montreal also has a major sports venue downtown. The Bell Centre is home to the Canadiens hockey team and is also used for major music events, and is mostly accessed by public transit - metro (subway) and bus.
Oh hadn't thought to look north for racetracks! Austin TX has a F1 track and was on the circuit this year. Doesn't QUITE have Montreal's transit, though
@@CityNerd yeah Montréal is great for that! The location is amazing. This makes me think, it would be interesting to have a video on reclaimed lands and artificial islands in cities. MTL's case is interesting because they used the dirt from metro digging to build this island, which was used for the universal exposition in 67
8:28 The saddest part about the meadowlands is that the Mall is close to getting shut down. It was way too big and expensive, and barely visible, being in the meadowlands and relatively far from the otherwise densely populated urban area due to the giant parking and swamp. Now its not breaking even financially. Such a waste of money, time, and resources.
Yeah, I wondered about that. How attractive is a mall (in a not-very-convenient location) when you can just go into a real city? I dunno.
It gets worse because Bergen County has blue laws that limit retail sales on Sunday. Why would you build a mall with that limitation?
@@bobbbobb4663 yeah, I just found that out. There are so many bizzare decisions made in the creation and operation of that mall.
Nice video, it seems like their is a much better use for these lands.
YES! GO TO A RACE! Especially fun are the short track races, so Bristol, Martinsville, Richmond, or ISM. The bump and run style of racing is really exciting to watch.
I would definitely like a deeper exploration of parking and trip generation methodology.
I'm very interested to see an American car enthousiast's reaction to European or South American sports venues and surrounding infrastructure. Must be mind boggling
I'm a car enthusiast and I'd much rather take a train or bus than deal with driving and parking to any event.
Car enthusiasts tend to be enthusiastic about racing or touring, not about commuting. 😉
watch car on one side sip beer and look at the river on the other sounds like an improvement on the concrete bucket seat stadium seating we have here.
A car enthusiast is someone who likes cars, not someone who likes parking lots...
I think cars are a fascinating feat of engineering, but the dependence we have on them is pretty shameful.
After trying to walk out of Auto Club Speedway two years ago after a race in search of *any* form of transit, I am glad to see it so high on this list.
The spectacle of a weekend at a NASCAR race is well worth at least one try. The infield at tracks like Daytona offer great access to the cars and drivers, as well as the big party that ensues when you have thousands of RVs jammed into the track. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is always a great time.
Hey Ray, I'm from Edmonton. I clicked on this video, somehow already knowing that you would mention WEM's parking lot. You did not disappoint. I was just surprised at how quickly you got to it. 00:57 As a cycling proponent, having WEM as one of the more noteworthy aspects of my city is a bit disturbing, to say the least... Love your vids.
I grew up near New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. It has a tiny amount of paved parking compared to the other NASCAR courses that made the list, but it does have a lot of cleared land for parking. On race weekends, the whole region is disrupted with all the traffic. Some roads, including the freeways, have lanes switch direction to handle the flood of visitors. A grocery store 23 miles away has a sign up at the driveway that basically says "don't even try turning left on race weekends. It's not happening". Other than the one or two race weekends a year, the raceway has surprisingly little impact on the culture. There are some other smaller events, and they put together a drive-through lights display for the holidays, but no one really thinks about it otherwise. Also, it's a lot of visitors that attend the races, unlike the other massive single-use parking areas in the state at the fairgrounds. People get excited for the fairs for weeks before the season, but most people dread race weekends.
Fun fact, 5% of all urban landscape in the US is literally a parking lot.
That doesn’t sound right. I doubt even 5% of all land in the IS is even urban/suburban
@@itsacorporatething @@itsacorporatething Oops I mean out of developed land
Great video
I can't speak for every racetrack, but for many of them, the parking lot is part of the venue. The Sparta, KY example you gave is particularly relevant. A few years back they hosted Import Alliance. The parking lot was converted into a car show and display area. Many tracks use their lots for events like this. Think of them as outdoor convention centers.
I got my second covid shot at Gillette Stadium and even with the vaccination center at full capacity (which was in the concourse of the stadium), the parking lot was mostly a desert. The shopping area seemed busy enough for a weekday evening and of course the vaccine center was hopping, but there was still a depressing sea of empty parking lots
It's great that there's a commuter rail station there too, but you have to walk through miles of parking after you get off the train.
@@omega8822 yeah true, BUT the Boston commuter rail sucks since most trains only come once every 1-2 hours. And the Gillette stop only tends to be used for Patriots gameday, which isn’t particularly useful for us New Englander soccer fans who wanna see the Revs play without having to own a car (tho Gillette is of course the polar opposite of a good venue for MLS and it really shows). I would also note that, while the commuter rail does connect Boston to Gillette, it doesn’t connect the rest of the region to the stadium. I’m biased since I’ve spent considerable time living in both Worcester and Hartford, but most of the region isn’t really connected to Gillette except by highway. U could take commuter rail from Worcester into Boston then Boston into Foxborough, but all in all that’s a trip of about 3 hours (one-way) for a stadium that’s only like 40 minutes away from the Woo by car. Then of course there’s no rail connection of any kind that u could take from Hartford into Gillette.
@@pjkerrigan20 Yup, like a lot of American rail lines the service is too infrequent for most people to use. While it's true that there's no way for Worcester and Hartford, even if just the people from Boston could take the train it would significantly reduce the amount of needed parking.
@@omega8822 true, I see no reason why the foxborough stop shouldn’t just be permanent. The people of that town deserve access to commuter rail and it would theoretically drum up business in all the outlets around the stadium.
I wonder what the numbers are like for football and soccer fans from Providence when it comes to commuter rail. That line goes down into providence and Warwick, plus the foxborough stop is only a couple stops away, feels like it would be a perfect commuter rail trip for Rhode Islanders
@@omega8822 I’d add as well that with Gillette being named as a host venue for the 2024 World Cup, there might be a big opportunity for those in local and state office to make major infrastructure improvements, given that most of the fans attending WC games at Gillette will likely stay in Boston and the official press releases market the venue as “Boston area”
I've attended NASCAR races in Texas and Delaware, plus I've been to the track on non-race days in Vegas and Bristol. (Also the stadium complexes in Philly, Houston, and East Rutherford, NJ, but you asked about the race tracks.) I do include the Bristol night race and the races at Talladega as bucket list items.
Yes, if you choose to not pay attention to any other aspects of the sport, it is a bunch of cards driving in circles. There's a lot more to it than that if you want to look for more, but some people just go for the crashes and engines.
I recommend trying it out with the second tier races. They're shorter, you can get better seats, but you still get that visceral sensation that comes from 40 unmuffled 700 horsepower engines rotating by at full throttle. It's a full-body experience you feel down to the bone.
Just don't expect to have detailed, enlightened discussions about your favorite benefits of centrally planned urban environs.
Not sure why autoincorrect changed whatever engine verb I intended to put there to "rotating" ... It's an amazing feeling when all the engines go VROOOM is the point I was trying to make
I absolutely agree, if you look past the surface there is a lot to like. In addition to the Trucks/Xfinity series being a good inroad, I think the local racing scenes across the US are also a great place to start. My first race was a late model stock race in Hickory NC and it was a ton of fun. Not everything in life is about urbanism. Just remember to bring ear protection lol
I was at the Meadowlands complex last weekend. Not only is there the huge 225 acre paved lot, but there’s also an enormous parking structure built for the mall. Great video.
loved the video :)
I've been to a Nascar race at Michigan Speedway. I remember it being NUTS. Walking from the car to our seat took 30 minutes, and the race was like 5 hours, because it started raining and the race had to stop. There's not enough coverage, so you just end up sitting in the rain on a bench seat without a back. Would not recommend.
Live near Wembley, London, work in transport planning and have spoken to developers, local authorities and fellow consultants on the future vision for Wembley! The place has seen insane transformation in recent years and car parking has pretty much disappeared, the trains can just about cope after a big gamel
I love your laconic style!
Grew up as a nascar fan because of my dad. I’m from Toronto but I’ve been to fair share of nascar races. Watching the race in person will always be more fun than watching it on tv. The sound of the cars just makes the experience
as someone who used to live and work near the state farm stadium i definitely consider the outlets to be part of the same area/share the lot.
i also hadn't realized until now how the comparitive lack of parking at european F1 circuits add to their charm! goes to show you can love cars, motorsport, etc. and also recognize/act upon the benefits of mass transit.
Good to know about Tanger! Agreed on F1. Had to go look at LeMans and Catalunya to get a sense of the difference...it's crazy.
I for one welcome the opportunity to partake in the masochistic collective self-flagellation that is your channel. With that in mind, I'd be interested to know which cities suffer the worst combined air/noise/light pollution.
LET'S GO WEDNESDAY BEST DAY OF THE WEEK! THANK YOU MR NERD
FYI, to use the light rail line associated with the former Qualcomm stadium required driving to a parking lot somewhere along the line where there were stations, and all of those parking lots were in shopping centers and featured signs saying “No Stadium Parking.” So, to use public transit, you risked having your car towed.
Great vid as always!
Part of me wants Houston to renovate the Astrodome back to a baseball facility. Turn it into a youth baseball or college baseball facility. It's an iconic baseball venue, even though it came from an ugly era of multipurpose stadiums.
In Philly... All that parking near the stadiums is for suburban fans to attend games. Unfortunately a majority of these fans come into the city, park and attend the game, but don't support the local businesses in South Philly or Center City. It's a shame how much real estate those stadiums take up. While public transit is good in the area, it's more convenient and more profitable for the teams to have large parking lots surrounding their stadium.
Oh some of those lots would make excellent parks. Especially the Philadelphia lots which would become a nice expansion of fdr park.
I know you’d need a place to put vehicles attending to events but imagine consolidating those lots into a few multi floor garages. Plus some vehicles find other ways to make the journey
I assume land is a lot cheaper over there in the US than constructing large parking garages.
The moment you mentioned those trip generation books manuals, I know really want to know about them. Hopefully you can make a video, I'm already looking forward to it!
I've seen people defend car dependence and lack of mass transit by saying
1) I like to be able to end up exactly where I'm going and not have to walk further to my destination and
2) Not enough people go to the same place to support mass transit.
These enormous parking lots throw a wrench in both arguments. Great work!
Could you do a video on the effects of impervious surfaces on flooding? I live in Baton Rouge, which is a prime example of suburban sprawl and also a very low lying area near a lot of rivers. Coincidently, we have a lot of issues with flooding, and a lot of people understand the correlation, but think the solution to the problem is blocking new development while maintaining the status quo rather than rethinking how we use the land that is already developed.
Also from Baton Rouge... lots of people in the suburbs east of the city blamed the divider on I-12 for their flooding back in 2016.
In the Houston area, when designing any impervious surface, it has to be mitigated. When adding anything into the flood plain, it also has to be mitigated. I spend a lot of my time calculating the cut and fill numbers to insure it balances out.
The maintaining status quo was truly astonishing to me. The way we use land in the future of Baton Rouge unclear
@@ScottX507 That's good to know that it's being taken seriously. I hope Baton Rouge can follow the example, especially when it comes to not modifying wetlands/floodplains as much. I believe that maintaining natural areas is our best bet at managing flooding since those areas do such a good job at absorbing and slowing the flow of water so that the natural drainage of an area isn't overwhelmed.
@@Maverickgouda I love a lot of what Baton Rouge has to offer, but I do really worry about the future of it. None of the development seems to do a good job of working towards a more sustainable city either financially or environmentally. I do see some stuff that makes me hopeful, but I worry about whether we're doing too little too late.
Maybe something like the city with the most walkable parks? Some sort of weighted average of residential units/zoning, and parkland? Might be tricky as parks tend to not be super well noted on land use data, but would be super interesting.
Lakewood California is literally named Park City USA and I believe we're ranked number one in the US for youth sports. When they designed the city they put an elementary school and park within walking distance of every house, a middle school within biking distance, and a high school within biking/moped distance. I feel bad for those without the same luxury in these massive urban sprawls
This has gotta be one of your best in terms of one-off quips and commentary.
i finally understand what makes these video's so appealing. The monotone deadpan sarcasm.
As a fine gentlemen once said in a podcast about engineering disasters:
"PAVE THE EARTH!!"
Man, I went to the national championship game in Glendale, AZ in 2011 and didn’t even contemplate at the time how odd it was to park there. It just seemed normal at the time. Now over 10 years later I look down at that monstrosity from above with horror. An area over half the size of Monaco. Now I’m imagining a sprawling American-style parking lot built around Monaco for the Grand Prix. Anyways I found this video to be extremely depressing.. Keep up the great work!
The thought of a parking lot being near the size of a whole country is crazy, even if that country is a micronation.
HEYO! Nice to see Craven Cottage get a shoutout. Especially now that they have the new Riverside stand, it’s high on my stadium bucket list. Hopefully the subscriber count will hit Selhurst Park soon!
I’ve been over 20 Nascar races in the past 15 or so years, and while I don’t really keep up with racing anymore, they are a ton of fun! It’s a giant tailgate party that goes on all weekend. Lots of beer, greasy food, concerts, grilling out, and camping. I’d say it’s an experience that most people that enjoy other large events like NFL, NBA, big concerts, etc would really enjoy! That all said, they are a traffic nightmare and I have huge concerns with the environmental impact of these events.
Sounds really horrible
@@worldchangingvideos6253 sounds like you're the life of the party lmao
What about a top ten list for "hidden" cities? Places that if they were located on their own away from giant metro areas would be recognized as significant cities in their own right. But because they're adjacent to even bigger cities or are considered just suburbs, nobody really notices they exist.
I'm from semi-rural Massachusetts, and it always strikes me when I travel that there are some truly large (and sometimes genuinely nice and notable) cities that if transported to Western New England would instantly become regional hubs of activity with their own noted identity. And they might even get their own speedway or NFL stadium replete with acres and acres of parking lots!
Interesting!
If it hasn't been explored, I'd second this choice! When I moved from North Carolina to Pennsylvania, I was surprised to learn that the state only has two large cities (above 250k population): philly and Pittsburgh. The next largest city is Allentown with 125k; seven of north Carolina's cities are larger than PA's third largest. 🤯
Having lived in Philly I can say that it always seems as if very few people (as a %) used mass transit vs driving. In addition very few people seem to carpool there. On I95 in the morning it’s all cars with 1 person in them.
I attended a NASCAR race at Pocono Raceway. It was fun. LOUD, but fun. I’ve also attended several Indy Car races there. They aren’t as loud but their speed is so much greater. Long walks back to the cars and long waits to get out. I’ve also attended Indy Car races at the Meadowlands when the course was through parking lots and access roads.
Shoutout that Charlotte made the list lol, I’ve been up to the speedway a number of times for different events and I’ve got to say it’s amazing to see how much space there is when you’re actually up there.
I think going with footprint made a lot more sense than number of spaces! Good decision imo.
how about a video on commuter trains? how they just sit there waiting for people to commute back home while in the rest of the world they would run all day long, maybe a top 10 on train yard near downtown?
This is a really odd problem. In many places in Southern California, there is transit only for commuters in one direction, with the last train or express bus in the opposite direction leaving before 3 pm. The last train in the heavy commute direction may be at 7, so you have to drive if you want to have dinner with colleagues. It seems that planners only think of transit as a means to alleviate freeway traffic, not as a means to get around for work or fun.
CityNerd is my jam
I grew up in the Philly burbs and there were definitely times when more than one of the venues was in use at the same time. The Wells Fargo Center where the Sixers and Flyers play is often used for concerts, ice shows, etc. as was the Spectrum before it. Now that the Phils and Eagles have separate stadiums it's possible in the late summer/fall that they both end up playing at the same time.
Could you do a video more generally about impervious surfaces (not just parking lots)?
It would have been useful here to have an estimate of how long it takes to walk from one side of these car parks to another. Otherwise it’s just hard to grasp the sheer scale of them!
I did the estimate for the MetLife centre car park and found that it would take about 35 minutes to walk from one corner of it to another. That’s just mind blowing!
Good point. I did struggle with how to best convey the scale -- that was a good idea.
@@CityNerd I suspect a lot of other non-Americans would struggle to comprehend how big these car parks are.
There’s a mall near me in Bristol called Cribbs Causeway which has over 7000 parking spaces (that’s a lot by UK standards). And even that would only take 12 mins to walk from one extremity to the other according to google maps. The scale of of some US car parks is something else!
Toronto has done such a good job at making its stadiums part of its urban areas that I never really realized that putting massive parking lots around stadiums was even a thing until I was much older. I grew up in a Toronto suburb and even then we pretty much always took the train into the city to see games. Even now, I think this video was eye-opening to see how widespread this approach is.
I've lived in Toronto for over 20 years, and when I saw a Marlins game in the Miami suburbs at the stadium featured here (is it Hard Rock now? It's changed a bunch of times and I couldn't be bothered to look it up), I was astonished at the parking situation. The exit ramp off the highway leads right into the giant lots, which are a veritable sea of asphalt. I can't imagine how hot that would be during a South Florida summertime. What an eyesore.
Love this channel and feel strongly about good use of urban space. Also a big fan of motor racing. Not nearly as offensive to see less urban land used for big tracks.
I Remember reading that ‘free parking’ is the single largest domestic expense for the US, and second overall, only behind the military
Wow!
I'd need to see a source on that, seems "domestic" might be doing some heavy lifting, though if it's even remotely close that's just a shame.
I'm not quite sure on it's overall expense, but depending on land costs, a single parking spot to build is usually pegged around $7,000, one in a parking structure is around $20,000, and one in a structure with underground parking can rise above $35,000. All before any property taxes and maintenance costs. And I haven't seen costs of on-street parking, but since they take up like a quarter of a streets area, they are quite expensive too.
@@jezzarisky I know parking is extremely expensive and rarely burdened by drivers and I did misread the comment a bit but I'd still be interested in a public source.
I'm interested to hear your thoughts about how suburban areas can take the first steps towards more urbanization and being less car-centric. Does it all rely on changing the zoning laws? If so, what would be the next steps? I've only ever lived in suburban areas (until moving to Burlington, VT last month), and the majority of my commutes were from suburb to suburb. Changing a city center to make it more walkable seems challenging enough, but changing the suburbs seems like it'd take decades. (Which worries me, since we don't have decades to delay the effects of climate change.) :'(
I'm not the OP, but here goes. Start with growth management to limit outward sprawl, a mix of legislated and physical elements like the West Coast or Miami. Developers will quickly learn to fit more into less land, like multi-story car dealerships and supermarkets with housing on top. And of course you need to zone infill land to handle plenty of growth so land prices don't get out of whack. And you need good transit anywhere dense uses go.
Check out the book Walkable City by Jeff Speck, it's about that exact topic.
Good suggestions in your responses. You did nail the basic problem, though -- it takes forever to retrofit bad urban form, and we don't have forever!
IMO, transit first. If you put a train line down, density will follow. You can't reasonably expect people to get rid of cars without a transit option to use in the first place. This can also be used to make clever tax zones where developments near stations can fund future rail exapnsion which then cycles and leads to more trains and more density! If you google "transit oriented development" you can see how this is being done in places like Denver, Bay Area, Salt Lake, LA, and others.
My favorite example of this is Denver's Union Station redevelopment. It used to be abandoned and neglected old freight yards and Amshack. They then revamped the train station through loans. However, it was paid off completely in a few years because of a special tax district that was set up on the old yards where developers built 16 -story mixed use buildings
1960's Amsterdam was pretty similar to 1960's US cities. Start with town planning allowing mid density and multiple use, make things safer for bicycles, better public transit with dedicated lanes ( people will catch the bus over driving if it is quicker and convenient. Perversely making it better for pedestrians, cyclists and public transit users has made it much better for drivers too. In Amsterdam drivers have to take the long way around, but the long way is still so much quicker than a direct rout in the US. It is far more complicated than this and the Dutch have been refining the designs for 60 years. The Dutch go more lower speed limits for cars and achieve a higher average speed, plus speed limiting is done by how roads are designed rather just enforcement (systematic safety if you want to google search)
I'm from the Toronto area and I was headed to Nashville from Cincinnati. I'm sure that number 8 is the huge race track we passed on the highway in the middle of nowhere.
The only time I ever saw something so massive was when I drove by the one in Dover, Delaware.
Those race tracks are insane. We have nothing like that up here, we just let them use the roads lol
I knew the meadowlands sports complex was gonna make the list! We have great transit in NJ and there’s a train station right in the middle of it yet still too many people drive there despite that, the parking lots are practically empty 95% of the time
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Parking lots
Pretty sus
Craven Cottage is quite a nice place. What is nice is that you walk through a park along the Thames from the Underground to get to the field.
And as a Chelsea supporter, I of course love the location of Stamford Bridge. .
Thanks!
You bet!