04/25/08
Students are sick of trudging long distances from their dorm rooms to their parking spots, from their cars to their classes. Their solution: Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
Wait a minute. Putting in parking lots involves ripping up grass and earth and plopping cement or asphalt on top, just so you can nose your car in between yellow lines and diminish the length you have to walk.
While parking lots are necessary, there are alternatives to using them, like, for instance, walking instead of driving. It’s amazing how the average American can complain about the high price of gas and the lack of parking spaces in the same breath. Reduce complaints of both by walking. Walking a few extra blocks isn’t an awful punishment.
The body is designed to walk. Bipedalism is a product of evolution. Yet, many are eager to regress – demanding cement replace more grass – so they can shave five minutes from their journey to their car. Instead of mowing land, we pave it.
When we go somewhere we want to park directly in front of our destination, and many times we’ll waste several minutes searching for the closest spot.
We’ve come a long way since our hunter-gatherer days, but this progress might just be a myth. How far have we really gotten considering hardly any of us ever walk?
Like a loose tooth, our relationship with nature is hanging by a fragile thread, and yet we’re so eager to sever the connection completely by bulldozing yet another field to put a parking lot in its place.
Granted, our society is arranged so that parking lots are necessary, but the current parking problem is grossly exaggerated.
In the city, most spots are metered and you still have to take a lengthy trek to get to your destination. Try to enjoy your short walk to class and stop wishing it was shorter, because eventually the complainers will win and erase another section of grass to replace it with a chunk of cement.
In the meantime, we suggest you walk or bike to campus and enjoy the few remaining natural elements left of the environment.
And remember, land supply is limited. We should use it carefully.