A Brief Cultural History of the Parking Lot

> Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as "jaywalkers." In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as "road hogs" or "speed demons" and cars as "juggernauts" or "death cars." He considers the perspectives of all users--pedestrians, police (who had to become "traffic cops"), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for "justice." […]

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2924825-fighting-traffic

See also the book:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking

Former provides a quick view of accessible parking and minimises in-mall walking whereas the latter means stores can promote their wares to passing cars more easily.

A couple of recent big box store builds in Australia I've noticed (Bunnings in SA) are one-brand warehouses built on top of a single storey of car parking. Once in the store and even in the outdoor garden centre, it feels identical to older ground level stores. More compact footprint, car parking is protected from the elements, and the store has a branded facade on the street.