In every city there is a parking lot to park your vehicles and if you are looking for an affordable option that makes right use of landscape, than choose green park lots. By using natural drainage landscapes and permeable paving, green parking lots reduces the runoff that is normally discharged into the local water bodies.
There are several options for designing the green parking lots. The common things used in all options are permeable pavements and natural drainage landscape. The porous concrete, grid system and porous asphalt are included in permeable paving and the grid system has rigid plastic forms that are filled with soil or gravel and vegetation depending on the area it has been used. Through the voids of the permeable surface, these pavements allow rain to infiltrate when installed over the drainage stored bed.
Another thing used is natural drainage landscape which includes rain gardens and bio swales. Bio- swales acts as a filter to filter the storm water flows through the vegetation to the discharge point whereas rain gardens are designed to infiltrate and hold the runoff. It can help to reduce the volume of runoff generated from its for slower discharge.
We are major part of our environment and are public places that have great impact on our city structure and design. To maintain balance in our ecosystem we need to think at once while developing a parking lot in the city, it should include something that not only allow drivers to park their cars but also offers different variety of public uses. It is the first place in almost every building or a gateway through which employees, customers and visitors enter into the building.
So here we need to be thoughtful while developing such an important part of environment. Green infrastructure is the ideal way to build parking lots with ecosystem issue consideration. The benefits from green are:
It reduces overall facility cost and capital cost by achieving water quality treatments and flow control requirements
It can enhance the protection of nearby water bodies
It can achieve water quality treatment
Enhance parking requirements
Improves city and place environment
Spread greenery in the surroundings
Reduce temperature by providing shades to the parked cars and pavement
Provide attractive onsite storm water management
Creates people friendly and more aesthetically pleasing environment
Reduce air pollution
Reduce the formation of greenhouse gases
Stays last longer as trees acts as a cooler for pavement surface
The additional advantage of having green parking lots is that it can serve as a community spaces for bike riding, fairs and farmer markets when the space is not used for parking.
