Comment by eclipticplane
17 hours ago
A better version for shade and city beautification is to force trees around/within the parking lot.
17 hours ago
A better version for shade and city beautification is to force trees around/within the parking lot.
I love seeing trees in more places, but for parking lots in particular they do have some downsides compared to solar panels. They often require more space; they attract birds that that poo on vehicles; and there’s a higher risk of collateral damage during windstorms. Not to mention that solar panels directly produce electricity, of course.
We absolutely should see more trees in many cities, but they introduce their own challenges in parking lots, especially if they’re placed retroactively.
> they attract birds that that poo on vehicles
I think this is a tree density problem. Most cities have a small number of trees, and they’re almost always over cars. These are trees that line streets and parking lots. Without trees, birds just have telephone poles and wires, which are also over the cars.
In San Francisco, we have a lot of trees on most of our streets, and many parks small and big, all full of trees. This means birds spread themselves out everywhere, not just over cars.
I think the true barrier to getting more trees is that individuals tend not to want to pay for and maintain trees. This includes caring for the tree, trimming it when it gets bigger, and cleaning the pollen, leaves, fruits, and branches that fall.
They also have the annoying habit of pushing concrete out of their way as they grow, and not just sidewalks. At my house we developed a water leak because the main waterline was 1 foot away from a tree. I don't know which came first, the tree or the waterline, but surely someone realized they were too close together, but they put them there anyway. Fast forward 50-100 years and the tree roots got bigger and ripped up the line.
> Without trees, birds just have telephone poles and wires, which are also over the cars.
In the US, maybe? Here in Western Europe the vast majority of this type of infrastructure is underground.
If you don’t want trees near parking cars that essentially prevents trees in cities, since cities are practically one big parking lot.
> they attract birds that that poo on vehicles
The city can simply introduce lizards to manage to bird issue.
But then what are they going to do with the Gorillas? Are winters in Korea that cold?
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Don't try to make sense on Spacker News... they wouldn't lear.
Trees can cause a lot of trouble if you don't give them enough space to grow. "Enough space" depends on the kind of the tree, but it's typically similar to a parking space. You can mandate trees, but then you'll get less parking.
> You can mandate trees, but then you'll get less parking.
This implies we want to maximise car parking spaces in a city, when, I think, you'd want to maximise enjoyment of the city.
That's not possible in most of the parking lots of South Korea. It's extremely dense and no space for big enough trees to shade cars.
More trees often means less density which leads to worse cities. There is a place for trees, but 'more is better' is not true, especially around a parking lot which has already dropped the density massively. A parking lot is a city dead zone. Trees next to that will just expand that dead zone. It is like in the US where there are ornamental 'parks' at huge intersections. Nobody goes there. They didn't help. Same with parks around government buildings. SF is a great example of wasted space due to this. Generally, you need to minimize parking areas massively and then pack as much city next to them as possible to make up for the services they robbed. In the places where you actually do have exceptionally dense city then you can think about patches of green strategically placed. Getting a diverse, ecosystem like, city is the right approach but there is no hard and fast rule to get there.
An even better version is to do away with the parking lot part and just have the trees.
Then how do show owners eat and pay their employees when no customers arrive because parking downtown is such a chore.
Touch a parking lot doesn't have the same ring to it.
Meowr!
/s
A couple other comments warned of bird poop danger. But the smart entrepreneur will add a drive thru car wash next to the parking lot.
People always end up petitioning for them to be cutdown because tree litter inevitably falls on cars. The best solution for cars is dense multistory parking.
Dense multistory parking underground.
In South Korea, you usually don't see parking lots the size of several football fields like in the U.S., even around venues that generally attract a lot of cars, even in suburban areas. Instead, there are several stories of parking lots under every large building. Above-ground space is simply too valuable to waste on parking.
Unfortunately, you can't install solar panels underground.
> Dense multistory parking underground.
I sometimes forget there are parts of the world where you can go more than about a metre down without breaking out the Kango hammer.
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Why not both?
They both are in competition for surface exposed to the sun. The mall’s parking lot near my place used to have trees. When they installed the solar panel shaders last year they cut down all of them.
I'm kind of struggling with the physics of this.
The solar panels go over the parking spaces, like a kind of a bridge, with supports at the sides. There's a lot of space in between.
If the trees were in the same space as the panels, they'd be in the midddle of the parking space. What you'd have then is not a car park, but just a plain ordinary park.
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Tree shade means bird poop danger.
I recently built a 400sqft porch on my semi-urban duplex.
Two birdnests have set up shop, both in my rafters (one on CCTV). My ceilinghooked bicycle will be decommissioned for this summer's nesters.
Unfortunately, being the only porch/shade: the cats are also prowling... figuring out the rooftop connections.
#PoopPorch2026
Imagine considering some bird poop staining the paint dangerous instead of the air pollution that's slowly killing you.
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