Skip to Content
Streetsblog Los Angeles home
Streetsblog Los Angeles home
Log In
Streetsblog USA

Get Your Cameras Ready for Half-Empty Black Friday Parking Lots

If the parking lot at your local big box store looks like this on Black Friday, you're doing it wrong. Photo: Strong Towns
Does the parking lot at your local big box store look like this on Black Friday? Photo: Strong Towns
Metros

It's standard practice to build parking lots to accommodate the maximum number of vehicles expected on the busiest shopping day of the year.

As a result, acres and acres of unnecessary asphalt make communities less walkable, waste land, funnel polluted runoff into our groundwater, erode tax bases, and drive up prices for lots of other goods that aren't car parking. Incredibly, a lot of these parking lots are so large they don't even fill most of the way up on Black Friday, America's high holiday of retail shopping.

Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns came up with an ingenious plan to help highlight this rather unsexy issue last year. He encouraged people to take pictures of half-empty parking lots on Black Friday and tweet them with the hashtag #blackfridayparking. Last year's contest produced some eye-poppers.

Chuck is encouraging people to do the same this year. If you're out there holiday shopping and come across one of those sad, empty parking lots, please tweet it and show the world the foolishness of our parking policies. For more information, check out the Strong Towns blog

In the meantime, Streetsblog USA wishes everyone a happy Thanksgiving, and looks forward to reviewing your spectacular pictures Monday.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog Los Angeles

Metro 2026 World Cup Transit Plans Emerging

From June 13 to July 7, 2026, Los Angeles will host eight World Cup soccer matches, all at the SoFi Stadium in the city of Inglewood

May 9, 2025

Metro Names Bill Scott as Chief of Police

Chief Scott and Metro leadership emphasized that keeping Metro transit safe would require a multi-faceted approach that included the deployment of officers as well as collaboration with the community, ambassadors, and service providers. "Sometimes enforcement is the answer," Scott said. "Sometimes it's not."

May 7, 2025

Lyft’s Anti-Worker Anti-Transit Record Raises Red Flags For Metro Bike Share

Edwin Aviles and Kalayaan Mendoza urge Metro not to reward bad actors working to undermine workers’ rights and mass transit

See all posts