Environmentalism on the pavement has to be about more than car mpg and gas taxes

Salon notes that we have parking space overkill because too many Americans are too lazy to walk more than half a block, if that far, to a store or other destination.

Instead, people may literally drive 15 minutes at one site, cruising for a close-up parking spot. Even if you’re in a Corolla or Civic, you’re wasting gas. In a Prius, you’re wasting stored charge.

Salon mentions two steps that can be an important part of the answer.

The first is for cities to cut back on their planning requirements for stores to offer so many parking spaces per store or mall square footage.

The second, for on-street parking, is a market-based one: price parking spaces per their desirability

I do see one concern here: People will be more tempted to cheat on handicapped parking. Higher fines and citizen citation-writing ordinances would address this.