An invistigation of surface parking lots and developing design strategies

Nowadays by increasing the population, demand for cars is increased also, the way of life in the most places around the world is dependent on the automobile, more and more natural lands are devoted to accommodating automobiles. Large amount of impervious surface areas and buildings, lack of vegetation in urban landscape, and especially mobility and car usage have negative impacts on the environment. By controlling the transportation system by motor vehicles Parking lots are inseparable sector of the most of the urban areas and these plots are mostly assumed as a place without beauty and aesthetic value. As long as cars exist in our society as a personal transportation system, environment will be faced with the parking lot issue and the designing problems that related to it. Sustainability concept has been arisen from these environmental concerns in order to find long-term solutions for environmental degradation. Sustainable design of parking lots is an important issue due to the way of design directly affects the way of peoples living and social health. Green design concept has assisted environmentally friendly designs in order to achieve sustainability. A considerable amount of attention has been devoted to examining the environmental impact of impervious surfaces. however, little attention has been paid to the transportation footprint portion of the impervious surface parking lots and their impacts on land use perspective has not been assessed on a large scale. This study explores how to design sustainable landscape and implement green design strategies in urban surface parking lots. In this study, firstly, the importance of the sustainable design in parking lots has been emphasized and the impact of the surface parking lots in various aspects has been researched in detail. At the next chapters, examples of the parking lots have explained in relation to the existence of green design initiatives and sustainable strategies in their design process. In the third chapter, a table of sustainable design criteria have been determined as a guideline based on the comprehensive research on proposed examples, guidelines and, literature that was mentioned in the previous chapters' in this study. Fourth chapter includes of a general analysis; which is conducted in various scale. Fatih district as recommended by Ispark was considered as case study for large scale analysis because of its historic and strategic situation in Istanbul. The high amount of impervious, or paved, surfaces in this area creates a large volume of water that flows directly and indirectly into city sewers and, eventually, into the Marmara Sea and Golden Horn, in addition impervious surfaces and lack of green coverage cause to increase the temperature in the mentioned area. In large-scale analysis, firstly Fatih district's existing parking lots and green spaces are Highlighted in different maps according to the 2014 satellites images and, furthermore additional maps are prepared to present the green areas and surface parking lot's coverage in the years 1966 and 1982, these maps are compared with existing green networks and parking lot coverages. By analysis and comparison of mapped data's this will be result that urbanization of the Fatih associated with the loss of natural green spaces and agricultural lands and increase in the paved surfaces in Fatih District. For site-scale analysis five surface parking lots are selected as case studies. Site visit and survey was done for determining the feature of the sites then these lots are evaluated according to the mentioned sustainable criteria table for understanding the situation of the Istanbul's surface parking lots in relation to the existence of sustainable criteria in their design. In the final step, a plan was designed according to the sustainable design table for Sehit Ahmer property in Istanbul as case study, proposed plan was compared with the conventional site plan. By the way most of the conventional surface parking lots can be improved by implementing green design infrastructures while providing aesthetic and social benefits in public realm and without changes in the land use.