What to Do with all the Empty Car Lots?

The editors at Planetizen raised an interesting question in its Feedback forum last week: what should cities do with the coming surge of empty car dealerships? (Between Chrysler and GM, there will be at least 1,900 nationwide). The loss of these dealerships is likely to blow huge holes in city tax budgets across the country and leave untold acres of unused open space.

Responses varied from the sensible to the utterly ridiculous (vertical towers with ports for flying cars?), but more telling was how readers voting on the choices. The highest voted responses were to “ask the local residents about what the community needs” and “urban gardens” with “farmers markets and local events” and “create walkable, vibrant places” coming in third and fourth.

Granted, Planetizen is a self-selected community if there ever was one, but even so maybe the results provide some hope that so many people are voting for democratic, local or sustainability-minded alternatives.

The only concern I have with the “local residents” approach is that the places where giant car-dealerships lived—suburban sprawl wastelands—are, by definition (and simple geometry) unlikely to possess much in terms of local community or civic engagement to build on.

Nonetheless, that amount of open space near cities is a potentially tremendous resource if we take the initiative rather than letting it bake into squalor. Given the environmental damage that so many acres of asphalt causes, (from toxic stormwater runoff to creating urban heat islands) maybe depaving should be the first step in any redevelopment program. Once the blacktop is gone, it may be easier to visualize the beginnings of a regenerated, living world, whether it comes from a sustainable farm, a walkable village, or something else.