automated car parks

In America on average there are about 5 paved parking spaces for each car on the road. That is roughly about 1,000 square feet per car adding up to millions of square miles of black, asphalt-covered, sun-heat-absorbing, rain-water-drain-preventing, parking lots, which sit unused most of the time. The fact that overall on average cars get more allocated space than most big city dwellers raises a number of ethical and other concerns. Yet the problem is bigger than that. Just some of the other negative consequences are loss of productive farm-land, local climate warming and its consequent big-city heat-waves. (For example, if Los Angeles were to paint its flat-roofed buildings, parking lots and streets white, there would be an estimated decrease in temperature of about 5 °F (i.e. about 2.5 °C), which in turn will reduce heat-wave severity and related deaths, [...]