It’s been three years since I last measured how much of Chicago’s land area is occupied by parking lots and parking garages. On December 25, 2019, using data drawn into OpenStreetMap by volunteers including myself, 2.5 percent of Chicago was for car parking.

Based on additional data since then, the land area of Chicago occupied by already-mapped parking lots and garages is 176,973,866.57 square feet, or about 2.7 percent of Chicago’s area.

This means that 0.52 additional square miles have been drawn into OpenStreetMap. If it hasn’t been drawn there, we can’t measure it. This means this number is a *minimum* of the land area devoted to car parking in Chicago.

Between 2019 and 2022, 173 more of these parking lots were drawn into OpenStreetMap in Chicago. There are still so many more parking areas that are not mapped!

That converts to:

  • 4,063.32 acres
  • 7.08 mi^2 (square miles)
  • 15.93km^2 (square kilometers)
  • 2.7% area of Chicago is parking (Chicago’s land area is ~589.56 km^2 )

There are some future parking -> building conversions coming soon. The buildings will be providing parking, but it will be integrated into a mixed-use development. The parking lot in the image, for example, is slated to become an office tower.