Sim Parking Lot

This Atlantic interview with SimCity designer Stone Librande has stuck with me.

We were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that [SimCity] was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.

Stone Librande
A large parking lot, perhaps two-thirds full of cars.
One portion of the Superstore parking lot in South Vancouver. (Apple Maps)

While doing research for the game, Librande was faced with quantifying our land use decisions.

When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store.

For example, here in Vancouver the parking bylaw requires one 14m² parking space for every 20m² of supermarket floor space. Adding the necessary lanes to allow cars to get in and out, this law practically guarantees that grocery stores will be more parking lot than store.

A parking lot taking up 60% or so of a supermarket's land parcel.
A typical Safeway in Vancouver’s Collingwood neighbourhood. (Apple Maps)