What's wrong with this picture?

If you guessed "it says no parking on the no outlet street, so what is that space even used for?" you are correct! If you aren't going to allow parking on the "street", at least rip up the pavement and create a green space. Any other suggestions?

Parking lot wasteland

Parking Lot Wasteland.

This parking lot, as many parking lots for American shopping centers, are built with more than enough parking spaces. If you notice, about half of any given parking lot is empty. Someone told me once that they plan out retail parking spots based on how many spaces they think they'll need for Christmas. I'm not sure how true this is but it seems silly to create all that run-off and spend all that extra money on paving just for one month of the year.

I remember back in my high school environmental science class learning about alternatives to the typical pavement options. My teacher talked about something similar to this, where one company used something comparable to cinder blocks on their side and planted grass in the voids. Instead of having a huge barren wasteland that had high maintenance costs and put off lots of heat in the summer, and run-off after storms, they had a lush grass that was stable enough to park your car on. The only maintenance was the occasional mowing.

Much to our disappointment, he concluded that the company had to revert back to blacktop because too many women were complaining about their high heels getting stuck in the grass.