Wed, Sep 19 2007
THEY PAVED PARADISE, AND PUT UP A PARKING LOT
Parking Lots Outnumber People, Add to Pollution
LiveScience.com - Sprawling suburban parking spaces outnumber drivers by three to one in a Midwestern county, a finding that typifies a troubling trend nationwide that increases urban heating and pollution, researchers say.
Digitalized aerial surveys taken in 2005 were used to calculate the total area devoted to parking lots in Indiana's Tippecanoe County and revealed the paved lots covered an area larger than 1,000 football fields and that there were three times as many parking spaces as drivers who lived in the county, said study leader Bryan Pijanowski of Purdue University.
Pijanowski said that his study was relevant across the country because generally Americans are paving an increasing amount of land each year on which to park when they go to the store, work, school or other places.
The results of the Tippecanoe study—355,000 parking spaces in a county that is home to 155,000 residents—are cause for concern because parking lots are a major source of water pollution, contributing 1,000 pounds of heavy metals into water runoff every year, he said.
"The problem with parking lots is that they accumulate a lot of pollutants—oil, grease, heavy metals and sediment—that cannot be absorbed by the impervious surface," said study member Bernard Engel. "Rain then flushes these contaminants into rivers and lakes."
The research findings were presented at a recent conference of land-use experts in the Netherlands.
Because parking lots also prevent the rain from soaking into the ground, they can worsen local flooding and erosion, Pijanowski said.
The paved surfaces also add to the urban heat island effect, which can raise temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius by absorbing more of the sun's rays than the surrounding ground, said Indiana state climatologist Dev Niyogi, a colleague of Pijanowski at Purdue who did not work directly on this study.
The parking lot count focused on lots at businesses, Purdue University and other public properties. Lots on private property and multi-level parking garages were not counted, so Pijanowski says his parking space calculation is a significant underestimate.
To back away from the American trend of "paving paradise to put up a parking lot," to paraphrase songwriter Joni Mitchell, mega-churches and businesses such as "big box" retailers could build shared lots, Pijanowski suggests, which would help conserve land and stave off some of the parking lots' negative effects.Wed, Sep 19 2007
GREAT DEPRESSION HOUSING PRICES? ME BUYING!
Now, that's what I'm talking about - dropping 20-50% in price is more in my league. Buy me that nice little hacienda I keep jabbering about.
Housing slump may produce a recession
WASHINGTON, Associated Press - An economist who has long predicted this decade's housing market bubble would deflate said the residential real estate downturn could spiral into "the most severe since the Great Depression" and could lead to a recession.
Yale University economist Robert Shiller's written comments to lawmakers came a day after the Federal Reserve responded to credit market turmoil by slashing the target federal funds rate by a half point to 4.75 percent.
Shiller, in testimony prepared for a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee said the loss of a boom mentality among the public may bring on a drop in consumer confidence that poses a "significant risk" of a recession within the next year.
Meanwhile, Peter Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, gave a more tempered forecast, saying that financial market turmoil and weakened consumer confidence pose economic threats but are not likely to send the economy into a recession.
A hypothetical 20 percent drop in home prices over two years would reduce U.S. economic growth by one half of a percentage point annually to 1 1/2 percentage points annually after three years, the Congressional Budget Office calculates.
"The risk of recession is elevated but the most likely scenario at this point seems to be continued economic growth," Orszag said.
The hearing came as the government said Wednesday it would slightly raise the investment portfolio cap for government-sponsored mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a way to pump cash into the stretched mortgage market.
Since mortgages made to people with weak credit are concentrated among low-priced homes, Shiller said "low income people will be especially hard hit by the correction." He advocated the creation of a new federal commission, modeled after the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to detect abusive lending practices that critics say were common in the market for loans made to people with weak credit.
Recent readings of the housing market suggest a rebound isn't coming anytime soon.
The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that construction of new homes fell by 2.6 percent in August to the slowest pace in 12 years as troubles. On Tuesday, the National Association of Home Builders reported that its index of builder confidence fell in September to equal the lowest level on record.
Also, foreclosure filings in August more than doubled nationwide from the year-ago period and jumped 36 percent from July, research firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Tuesday.All news articles and images provided under the Fair Use Notice.