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.
One process I’ve relied on in the past to keep my Twitter postings fresh is automatically cross-posting photos that I upload to Flickr to Twitter. This is done through Zapier and inspired by this answer in their forums.
Zapier currently doesn’t have any Mastodon integrations, but it’s possible to use Mastodon’s API and Zapier’s webhook function to notice your newly-uploaded photos from Zapier’s Flickr integration and “toot” them to your Mastodon account.
Note: I originally set this up as an RSS feed to Mastodon Zap before realizing that Zapier already has a Flickr integration.
First, to prepare for creating a Zap later, you’ll need to create an app in your Mastodon server. You can create an app by going to edit your profile and then opening the “Development” tab.
Select the “New application” button, give it a name, change the privileges, and use “http://zapier.com” as the only Redirect URI. Then check the appropriate boxes so that only a single privilege is checked: “write:statuses”.
Give your application a name, enter https://zapier.com as the Redirect URI, and check only the box next to “write:statuses”.
Mastodon will create a token for you to insert at the end of this URL that Zapier needs: https://mastodon.social/api/v1/statuses?access_token=INSERT_YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN
If your Mastodon account is on a different server, then replace “mastodon.social” with the domain name of the server where your Mastodon account is.
Secondly, go to your Zapier account and create a new Zap. Search for the trigger app “Flickr” and then connect Zapier to your Flickr account if not already connected. The trigger should be something like what you see in the screenshot below.
When you make a new zap, use these settings: “Connect this app…Flickr…with this one…Webhooks by Zapier”. Then, “When this happens…New Photo…then do this! POST”. Zapier will automatically give it a name that you can try later and then you can select the “Try it” button to get stated and customize.
You’ll need to customize the action that Zapier takes each time there’s a new photo. Until there’s an integration with Mastodon there’s a little complexity to defining the webhook action that Zapier will do.
The type of webhook you’ll create is a “POST” and you only need to add one field to the payload that’s sent from Zapier to your Mastodon: “status”. The value of “status” can be whatever combination of text and fields that Zapier pulls from your Flickr.
The minimum field to insert is the link to the Flickr photo page. Mastodon will need this to generate a rich media preview to add to the Toot (since it’s not possible to send image attachments).
I am starting to take my Adanet CO2 concentration monitor everywhere because I want to see which stores, restaurants, and offices have “fresher” air. The other day on December 20, 2022, I visited a BMO Harris bank branch and a Target store, and I took note of the measurements in three locations within my apartment building.
My goal is to take two readings in each location and photograph the second reading. The photograph provides the proof of the reading in the location I specified as well as a timestamp and GPS that only I can see.
I also took an outdoor reading to establish what the ambient level was that day: 421 parts per million (ppm), which is exactly what the global ambient level is!
Keep in mind that a typical reading in my studio apartment is around 650 ppm.
An outdoor reading of 421 ppm, for reference.
BMO Harris bank branch – 115 S LaSalle St
This is a large bank branch with half a dozen teller stations and a significant business banking area. There were two tellers, a handful of other staff, and myself and another customer – the person density was very low.
Reading: 614 parts per million (ppm)
The CO2 reading was 614 ppm at a BMO Harris bank branch in downtown Chicago.
Target – 1 S State St
A busy department store is where I was most excited to take several readings. I took four readings, all on the second floor.
Men’s clothing department, three minutes after entering the store: 646 ppm
Another area in the men’s clothing department, three minutes later: 785 ppm
A dressing room, six minutes after the previous reading: 913 ppm
Photos from inside Target follow the list order above, from left to right.
To give you another reference point, the readings have regularly exceeded 800 ppm – and have exceeded 1,000 ppm if I burn some food – when I’m cooking in my studio apartment. As I write this from there, the reading is 623 ppm.
I was pleased with these numbers at Target; I’m not an expert on assessing air quality but the Centers for Disease Control writes “that indoor CO2 concentrations no greater than 700 parts per million (ppm) above outdoor CO2 concentrations will satisfy a substantial majority (about 80%) of occupants” in office environments – or about 1,121 ppm.
My apartment building
I took three readings in my apartment building:
One of the two bike rooms: 619 ppm
An elevator (I had to visit a lot of floors to wait until I could get a second reading, which also meant the door opened a lot): 788 ppm
Gym (which has two rooms, and I took the reading in the larger room that had fewer people at the time): 596 ppm
Photos from inside my apartment building follow the list order above, from left to right.
I acquired a homemade and open source Adanet carbon dioxide (CO2) monitor from a friend in Chicago and tested it on a short trip on the Brown Line ‘L’. The Adanet monitors the concentration of CO2 in the air, in parts per million, which is a proxy for how “fresh” the surrounding air is.
Monitoring CO2 concentration became a more common activity and point of discussion since the COVID-19 pandemic began. A key way to reduce risk of transmission is to have “fresher” air. I’ll establish that “fresher” air is replacing air that has people’s outgoing CO2 with air that has less CO2, namely outdoor air.
I conducted an unscientific test of the “freshness” of the air inside a single Brown Line car on my trip between the Western and Belmont stations. I took five readings, which was the most I could take given that the Adanet refreshes every three minutes.
Map showing gray markers indicating where readings were taken. The trip started at the Western Brown Line station and the last reading was taking just before the train pulled into the Belmont station.
On the transit trip, the lowest reading was 475 ppm, which was taken while the device was in my coat pocket before I boarded the train at the outdoor station.
The highest reading was 680 ppm, when the train car had the most people on it during my short trip.
I have been checking the Adanet since getting home two hours ago.
I left it in the hallway outside my apartment and a single reading was 556 ppm.
Inside my studio readings have been around 650±20 ppm.
The highest reading since I got home has been 830 ppm and this is because I partially burned a quesadilla, releasing additional carbon into the air (my standalone air filter also turned on automatically to deal with the reduction in air quality).
I opened the balcony door to let fresh air in and 15 minutes later the reading dropped to between 671 and 692 ppm (the more readings the better).
A “trip” is the transportation planner’s name for the action of leaving home (H) to go somewhere else, and also going from that somewhere else (SE) to another somewhere else, and from the last somewhere else back to home.
Another way to write that would be to compare a “chained” trip (H-SE-SE-H) to two separate trips (H-SE-H + H-SE-H; also called “unchained” trips).
Trip chaining is a common pattern practiced by many people who usually use bicycles or transit for their trips so as to reduce effort and monetary cost, respectively. (I think there is also something to be said that trip chaining is also a natural way to “use time wisely”, but there are ways to use time wisely on long trips via transit.)
Effort in the context of the trips I tend to make can have many meanings: it can be the physical work put into riding a bicycle, but it’s also the time and energy to get ready to leave the house for several hours, the friction of moving my bike out of a building’s bike room and wondering if someone else will park there bike in “my” space when I’m gone, as well as the stress that comes with bicycling in Chicago.
Today I did a big trip chain…
I walked to the Harrison Red Line station to ride the ‘L’ to Fullerton, after which I walked over to Wrightwood 659 to see two art exhibits.
Then I walked back to Fullerton to take the Brown Line ‘L’ to Lincoln Square to pick up a new homemade CO2 sensor.
After that meeting I took the ‘L’ to Clark/Division so I could shop at Aldi (a block walk in each direction).
Finally I took the ‘L’ a fourth time back to Harrison.
Trip #2 was a deferred trip. The sensor was ready for me to pick up two weeks ago but it was unnecessary to make a trip just to go get it. I had no other errands to run in the Lincoln Square area, and no compelling reason to invent other trips between home and Lincoln Square (although I guess I could always stop at Aldi to restock certain groceries I prefer to buy there).
Trip #2 was a necessary but time insensitive trip.
A week ago, however, I scheduled to visit the galleries at Wrightwood 659. Because I would already be halfway to Lincoln Square I then scheduled the pick up.
Trip #3 was a spontaneous trip. Since I had such a long distance to go from Lincoln Square back to the Harrison station I figured that I might try to do some other things along the way…would I need to pick up beer at Off Color Brewing’s Mousetrap, should I stop at a Whole Foods (there are two along the Red Line, although there used to be a third one, next to the Fullerton station), or something else?
Welp, there’s an Aldi store one block away from the Clark/Division Red Line station. Perfect! My chained trip became even more efficient!
