America's parking spaces cover more area than Puerto Rico

Chris Shunk — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:01:00 EST

If you live in a city where parking is scarce, you won't like hearing this. MIT Professor Eran Ben-Joseph has written a book titled Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking, and the gist is that the U.S. has far too many parking spaces.

Ben-Joseph estimates that there are 800 million parking spots across the U.S., taking up enough space to cover Puerto Rico in asphalt. In fact, Ben-Joseph says that many large cities have up to one third of their overall space dedicated to parking.

So what's wrong with a glut of parking lots? For starters, they're made of asphalt, which absorbs energy from the sun, which warms the ambient temperature. The lots also lead to faster water runoff, which hurts the ability of plants to remove toxins from the air.

The book doesn't paint parking lots in a positive light, but we're guessing there isn't much that will be done to change the issue, at least in the short term. We are, after all, a country of auto owners, and we need a place to park our four-wheeled friends. And it's not like we're going to replace open lots with a glut of parking structures, since those can cost four times as much money to build.

America's parking spaces cover more area than Puerto Rico originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Puerto Rican funeral home presents shooting victim on his motorcycle [w/video]

Alex Nunez — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:30:00 EST

Filed under: Etc., Motorcycle

David Morales Colón's unusual wake. (Photo courtesy of Primera Hora) - Click above to watch video after the jump

If you thought you'd previously seen it all, well, you're wrong. Case in point: David Morales Colón, a 22-year-old Puerto Rican man who was shot to death last Thursday, and whose wake is now making headlines here in the United States mainland. How come? Well, suffice it to say that the funeral directors at Marin Funeral Home in San Juan's Hato Rey neighborhood have a flair for the unorthodox. For example, in 2008, they embalmed another young shooting victim and displayed his body standing up for the duration of a multi-day wake.

Back to the present: Yesterday and today, callers who stopped to pay their final respects to the late Mr. Colón got a bit of a surprise. Instead of the traditional presentation of the body in a casket, Mr. Colón's corpse, dressed in casual duds and sunglasses, was instead posed in a very lifelike position atop his Repsol-liveried Honda CBR600 F4. According to Puerto Rico's Primera Hora newspaper, the motorcycle was given to the victim by his uncle, and upon Mr. Colón's untimely demise, family members delivered the bike to the funeral home specifically for this unusual wake.

Lest you think this is some sort of insane hoax, here's the link to the local Primera Hora newspaper coverage, which features a multi-shot photo gallery, and here's the less detailed Associated Press wire version that's presently making the rounds. Finally, we've got a video posted after the jump. We'll say this: David Morales Colón rides into the afterlife in memorable style. Thanks to Joel for the tip, and thanks to Wes Siler for the bike ID.

[Source: Primera Hora, YouTube | Photo courtesy of Primera Hora]

Continue reading Puerto Rican funeral home presents shooting victim on his motorcycle [w/video]

Puerto Rican funeral home presents shooting victim on his motorcycle [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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