Awnings in the mall parking lot! What a great idea!

[randomness]

Often when travelling I come across little details that really need to be imported into the States. Shade awnings over the parking spaces in a mall parking lot is one of them.

This is one of those ideas that seems obvious once you see it: build a long plastic awning covering each double row of parking spaces in a shopping mall parking lot, so when people come back to their cars after shopping the interiors of their cars aren't deathly hot.

I've now seen this in parking lots as far apart as Brazil, Thailand, and South Africa. As I was driving a car in a couple of these places, I really appreciated having shade, and it might even have made me stay longer.

I can understand why places which have to plow in the winter don't do this; it is an impediment to the plows. On the other hand, I've never seen this in California, below the snow line. Why not?

And awnings could probably be designed which would allow plows in places like Texas or Georgia, where there isn't that much snow, to move ice or spread salt.

(pmat mentioned having her car get so hot in the lot at Citizens Bank Park that the glue holding the rear view mirror got unstuck, which reminded me of this.)

Comments

[cubes.livejournal.com]

Why not? Because Americans, expecially the teenage variety that inhabit shopping malls, would destroy such niceties inside of a week.

That's my bet.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

You know, you're probably right about that. Sad.

[rosminah.livejournal.com]

Perhaps America is so car-obssessed it'd cost far too much to provide awnings for our miles upon miles of parking lots.
Also, at least in the tropical areas, the awnings may have been there to protect shoppers and their purchases from rain, not their cars from the sun.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

the awnings may have been there to protect shoppers and their purchases from rain, not their cars from the sun.

I think it was to do both, because they certainly worked as rain shelters, too.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

THAT'S why my rear view mirror fell off in my old car!!!

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Another one of those I liked very much was the solar-powered electronic parking meters we saw in a few places in England (there's one per block, you buy a parking ticket and put it on your dash--one machine to maintain vs. ~20 and no argument about which meter you were actually parked next to).

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yes, they're going in all over the place; I saw them in Wellington and New York, too. Dunno if they're all solar, though.

[totient]

They have these in Baltimore now too.