Fred Flintstone always found a parking space
Anthropologists say early humans were hunters. But has anything really changed in a few hundred thousand years?
If you drive a car in an urban environment, you practice your hunting skills every time you search for a parking space. And if someone quickly fills a spot you have your eyes on, your inner Neanderthal awakens ready to hurl expletives if rocks aren’t readily available.
Or maybe you’re the cool and collected type who knows that riding up and down streets stalking empty spaces is a suckers game. No, you’ve evolved to parking lots! But are you any better off? Instead of driving round and round on the surface, you’re driving round and round on different levels underground or steadily up and up and up. And when eventually you do find a space big enough to squeeze your car into, let’s hope you have awesome hunting skills to find it again a few hours. And there’s nothing like the adrenalin rush of being alone in a parking lot late at night when the sound of your footsteps seems to telegraph your solitariness to every would be mugger.
But what is a poor man or woman to do? What’s the alternative?
Well, check out this video (with audio): http://www.woehr.de/en/projekte/budapest_m730/index.htm
It’s easy to imagine scenarios where clever things like this breakdown. But imagine all the benefits to you, to the environment and to urban planners. So, do you know anyone who works in your city’s local government? Send them a link to this video and maybe in a few years hunting for parking spaces will be something we read about in history class.
The Undude lives in New England. By day, he successfully markets enterprise software, and by night he plays a brutalized guitar in an unsuccessful rock band. When he’s not in conference calls, moving information from PowerPoint to Excel and then back to PowerPoint, or pondering the significance of his insignificance, The Undude is passionate about music, unnecessary technology and finding a good parking spot.
