Do you have a Part 107 Certificate (small Unmaned Areal Vehicle (sUAV))? You should have that FAA Pilot Certificate for flying your drone in support of a commercial enterprise. (Your UA-cam channel is a commercial enterprise). Another question is - is your drone registered with the FAA? It should be if it weighs over 250 grams (.55 lb).
@@InconsistentManner You can back in while parking or back out when leaving. The benefit of backing in while parking is that you already have had a good view of surroundings (pedestrians or cars), so it seems safer if you are competent at backing up into a spot and won't ding the other cars. When leaving, the 10 seconds to get in your car, put your seatbelt on, and turn the car on means the circumstances may have changed with cars and pedestrians, and you need to be more cautious while backing out. Also, backing in gives a nice setup to make a fast getaway in the event the parking lot is a ****show when leaving. 😜
Why design our cities around a once-a-year shopping promotion. Maybe just have reasonably-sized parking lots and stores will just have to spread out their promotions. Would that be the end of the world?
I guess it's the same reason why Americans buy big, off road SUV's with bad fuel economics, just because of a "Just in case scenario" where they "need space" or "need to go offroad (which is even illegal where I'm from and yet American car makers still use it as a selling point)". It's just a case of Americans overpreparing for their own selfish needs, because god forbid if such security ever went into something like public transport, where you have to mingle with other people.
@James Davis A station wagon? Or a hatchback? It's what we use in Europe without problems.... In my home country of the Netherlands the Volkwagen Golf and Volkswagen Polo are by far the most popular cars, and those are relatively small, especially when compared to the American crossovers, SUV's and trucks. And that is not because our roads are small or anything, our cities aren't Italian towns with super narrow roads.
@James Davis We can afford it aswell, we just choose not to.... Also, size of country doesn't matter at all when it comes to the car you choose. You can drive the same distance with a smart car as with a big semi-truck no problem. Imo, the US government should put big taxes on fuel because car use is just bad and should be discouraged whenever possible. The money gained should be put toward good public transport.
Where I live, most people I know stock up on materials leading up to Black Friday to ensure that they don't have to go outside because they don't wanna get trampled
There should be requirements that make parking behind the stores so when you take public transit or catch a ride you don't have to walk through a massive parking lot
In my hometown, they pretty much did that in the old shopping mall (there are two shopping malls): they exapanded the building upon the front parking lot, which made it just a 50 metter walk from the bus stop in front of it. Most of the parking lot is behind the mall.
CB: "yo look at how big these parking lots are" me: staring at the collosal roofs thinking about how easy it would be to put solar cells on top of them
those roofs are so flimsy they won;t hold a solar array . ever seen those buildings up close... "fancy front, rest is just bare minimum". even in side the ceilings would just be bare corrugated metal roofing. with airco ducts and other electrical / water conduits just in the open for all to see.
@@shealupkes yeah I work at a Walmart and there’s roof access with warnings saying not to bring “sharp stuff or stomp and watching your step” on the roof cause it’ll cut/tear it. Also when it rains expect a bucket to be placed somewhere to catch water
Because noone gives a fuck anyways. You want your customers to be in your place, so the easiest way to attract anybody with a vehicle is a free, close by, parking spot.
Sorta off topic but It makes me wonder why didn't the old empires, British french Spanish Germany, dutch, etc. Just move their entire empires to the new worlds like the americas, Africa's etc. So much more space and resources to exploit. Not dense and reduce fighting when your not bordering 10 different countries, all competing for same land and resources. Would there have been a need for wwi and WWII if the French controled present day Canada, present day USA remained British. Mexico = Spain, Brazil = Portugal, dutch and Germany would carve up the Africa's for themselves.... Or British moves to South Africa or Australia New Zealand etc. Instead we had centuries of fighting for power, ego, ideologies land and resources
@@malcolmholmes2596 nothing in new world to move too only hostile Indigenous population who will not accept your rule. When there is something, people already moved here kicked out the old monarchs.
Everything is twisted when you have an economy running on the assumption (reality) that each person buys and burns polluting gasoline in order to lug a gigantic, 2500-to-4500-pound piece of metal, glass, and rubber to work, to the store etc.
Moksum it really isn’t that much parking though. Europe is pathetic with its parking lots. And euro sprawl is hideous. In America you can get a gorgeous house with a perfectly manicured lawn relatively cheaply in many suburbs but in Europe the houses are small and ugly and the lots look wild and untamed. But you still have sprawl which = need for cars. You guys just have really shitty sprawl
@@LucasFernandez-fk8se I think you havent heard about public transportation yet in Germany you can take the S Bahn from the suburbs to the main city in every big city
Well at least we, unlike a lot of places in the US, have buses that leave pretty regularly that we can hop onto. I mean I live in a tiny town of just 2000 people but we still have a bus every hour that goes to the train station, where there's an S Bahn train every 10 minutes into the metropolis.
Hey kid, you like all the worst things of a strip mall combined with the worst things of a regular mall? No? Well I guess you're not cool enough for our "lifestyle center". Nothing can beat a vibrant downtown with mixed use development. Really all they need to do to make it work for suburbia is build parking garages on the edge of downtown so suburbanites can drive to downtown but not through it. A great example is Naperville, Illinois.
This video makes me very grateful that I live in Europe. Designing everything based on cars makes cities inconvenient and so ugly. I hope the city planning in America will catch on and enable more ways to move about than just cars. It's better for health, environment and IMHO for the people themselves: less traffic, less road rage, more exercise, more human contacts.
We should never forget that most American towns were once much like European towns. Then they started tearing buildings down to build roads and car parks.
Everything has it’s pros and cons, but I wouldn’t mind going back to public transport. I didn’t get a car until Senior year of college so I rode a lot of busses.
I am not an expert on city planning, but this is a really interesting topic! I think it would depend on the size of the city and the community surrounding. So much of the U.S. is rural. Where I grew up it was a 20 mile drive to the nearest small city (there were a few small towns closer) and the nearest full size grocery store. There was absolutely no public transportation because the 'neighborhood" was all cornfields. You can't even get Uber or a taxi to come out that far. The cities have to accommodate cars because public transportation is an expensive service to provide when traveling such a great distance for such a small amount of travelers. I agree that it's ugly and bad for the environment! I would love to see more public transportation options available. I just don't see that happening when a car is so convenient. Most people are not going to walk a mile and wait for 20 minutes at a bus stop to take a bus into town that stops 4 more times, making their 30 minute drive take even longer, just to get into town and have to walk from the bus stop to their final destination - not to mention having to carry groceries or supplies all that way. People are lazy and like just hopping in their car, driving exactly where they need to go and driving home, no walking and no waiting. Again I wish this weren't the case, terrible for our planet, but the U.S. is so built around individual vehicle transport that it would be difficult to change I would think. I'm curious what others think.
@@reach4it310 Start by remembering that American cities have already been transformed once... by demolishing town centres, driving 'car sewers' through housing areas (mainly inhabited by Afro-Americans but that is another story), building segregated and car dependent suburbs... This transformation was driven by well intentioned people who probably didn't realise that they were being manipulated. American cities did not grow 'organically' as many European cities. They were planned, financed and managed ... largely with a few to increasing profits. If cities can be rebuilt once they can be rebuilt again.
@@TheAmazingHuman-Man the main problem with public transportation in america especially systems like bart is the lack of cleanliness and security. Bart is often filled with homeless and junkies on the trains and vagrants. if they can clean these systems up and put a a couple of police at every station then more people would use it. the image of public transportation here needs to change inorder to make it viable.
I dream of walking a block from my apt and buying something I need instead of trying to determine if its worth the drive, traffic, gas, and risk of an accident. Maybe its just me but the last one usually keeps me from taking the car. Not the potential of being injured but the hassle that comes with it. So. many. cars!!!
I can walk to most of the shops I need on a daily or weekly basis, in a bout 5 minutes. I can bike to all the shops in my city in about 20 minutes. I might take a bus in bad weather. I live near the edge of Groningen, a city of about 200.000 in the Netherlands. I find American city planning to be an eye sore.
@@rogerwilco2 stop! I can only get so jealous. 5 min for me to get to the corner store. Not back. To get there and buy. Maybe one day the block will be more compact. 3 storied housing with mix use buildings sprinkled throughout. A cat can dream.
I live on a square in Gothenburg, Sweden and within a 10 minute walk I can go to 5 everyday shops, 30 restaurants/cafes/bars, 1 24/7 open 7-eleven with a gas station, and several barbers, fish shops (Gothenburg is on the west cost.), tech shops, etc. Even though I live 5 km or 20 tram ride from the city center. Gothenburg is the second largest city in Sweden with a population of around 600'000 (1,2 million if with suburbs.).
5:45 I've been told that bars require lots of parking because it lowers to amount of bar patrons utilizing street parking. This is important because street parking often have time/hour restrictions and, in theory, pressures people to drive their cars away instead of leaving the car behind overnight and picking it up the next day.
Imho the only thing a bar needs is a kiss-and-ride/stop-and-go lane where people can get in a taxi or Uber... Why exactly should we accommodate for people to arrive in their own car when they want to go drinking again?
Not big box but I assume Aldi and Trader Joe's (which is actually also just Aldi but Aldi North) might follow soon if they haven't already. Aldi North already installs them in or rather on their new remodelled stores in Germany.
Parking lots are the most ugliest eye shore ever! Nothing else has RUINED cities and architecture more than ever! Worst of all they are mandated! We must avoid the policies of Sprawl and Smart Growth!
Yeah the parking lots don't even look that good. At least in my country many parking lots will have bushes and trees in between the long rows of cars, making it feel at least a bit more natural. Other than that, Adequate public transport would be needed for anyone who doesn't have a car to benefit at all from this. Like what if a grandma wants to take her grandchildren to see a movie? What are the odds that a person that old can even drive a car safely, that's a huge risk to the safety of themselves and the people around them! And I don't think she would be able to walk that well all the way through a big parking lot either.
Underground parking lots are a better idea. They are more expensive to build of course, but they take way less space than normal parking lots. Its very common where I live, but in the US, they probably dont build them due to their abundance of space.
The best parking lot if no parking lot. In many centres of Dutch cities are carfree. Yet they attract more customers, who come by bicycle, foot, or public transport. The Dutch government also forbade big box stores, so stores are always in residential areas. Close by, so they can reached on foot or bicycle.
At the country club: Melvin: _(puffs on his briar pipe)_ "Jerry, wouldn't it be grand if we could watch crowds of poors fight each once per year?" Jerry: _(takes a sip of brandy)_ "Splendid idea, Melvin. We'll just sell those boxes they all watch at slightly above cost!" Both: _sensible chuckling_
@@khulhucthulhu9952 You just need to reduce the ammoun of room for cars. If trafic gets worse fewer people will driwe. And that space can be used for other things.
@@matthew8153 I don't mind plastic in cars when it's done well, because it's a light material that is pretty rugged. But now a days especially american or german cars look like plastic toys
The biggest parking lot I've ever been in is Disney World. You park there and they pick you up in a tram. You're not walking to the main gate. Not unless you brought a camel with you to make the trek over the tractless desert of blacktop between you and it.
I would call these parking lots as below the average parking lot size, probably because of the high cost of land in California. Parking lots in the South and some states in mid West are much larger than this.
Natomas being more empty may have had something to do with being there later in the day. 3 PM is a bit late on Black Friday due to how retailers structure the timings of their black Friday deals. I'm also curious about usages on the last weekend before Christmas, which is iirc close in terms of sheer volume of shoppers and sales to Black Friday.
@ If you make smaller trucks, then you'll see them parked everywhere. If you make bigger parking spots, you'll see more bigger trucks occupying those spots. Smaller trucks may be the best option of the two, but none truly solves the problem.
It's nice to see your study I heard a few years back Walmart was trying to convert some of there extra parking lots into extra retail development .I myself think that those extra parking spaces could be more useful if there was some form of residential development
Leave to Walmart to try to squeeze a dollar out of every square inch of property. In my city the nearest Walmart, built 20 years ago, has a too-small parking lot. They realized it would be too small but were hemmed in.
Another thing to consider when looking at parking spaces is that in general the amount of people going to stores has been declining due to online sales
thatcoolkidjoey it’s actually terrible. It blocks you from pulling through a space, makes longer vehicles stick out in the lane, and doesn’t let longer vehicles park.
Great Video! I would really be interested in a follow-up. As a European myself, I think refitting car-exclusive suburban environments is the biggest challenge in US Urbanism in the 21st century. Would be really interesting to hear more about upzoning, densifying etc. of US suburbia.
@@CityBeautiful I like the video, interesting to see a theory relate to practice! I'm thinking along similar lines, also for context I am UK based. Albeit with some knowledge (but not vast amounts) of UK transport planning codes from my civil engineering degree, I'm always astonished by the "minimum car parking requirements" which enforces a car culture (often with expensive vehicles which cost lots to run (fuel/maintenance/tax/insurance)). I don't have a car; I cycle pretty much everywhere (but am a passenger in my parents car for big family outings). I cycle because it is quicker, more convenient and cheaper than any other mode of transport (nb. being quick is not necessarily the same as convenience, although they are often linked e.g. a car could in theory be quicker but less convenient due to limited city centre parking at work). An interesting video would be what needs to happen in the US to improve the speed / convenience / cost / other attributes of better transport solutions (bikes / buses / rail / trams / car share / public transport etc.). Has this been implemented, is there a current best practice, what there ideas are there, and probably most importantly, what do the local population think/how have they changed their habits?
There are many suburbs that only want single family housing. The state government of California has gotten so fed up with this blocking of higher density, especially near heavy transit, that it is overriding local rules. The eruptions have been interesting to watch. The constitution of the US only recognizes the federal and state governments and the people. Cities are creations of the state. I think they are going to lose this one.
@@danielcarroll3358 Most zoning codes in the suburbs make building anything other than single family housing often simply impossible. It's really crazy, especially when there is plenty of demand for walkable suburbs.
As an American I really resent you smug European attitude of wanting to re-shape my country to be more like yours. It's really none of your business. Many Americans do NOT want to live in more dense environments. Who the hell do you think you are? People call Americans arrogant, when it's the Europeans who are the freakin textbook definition of the word.
Jordan Hamann I was about to comment the same thing. Checking the parking lot at 3pm would be like checking it on any other day close to the holidays. Everyone has gone home at that point.
i shop at the natomas shopping center and i always wondered why the lot was so darn big when everyone pretty much just goes to target... also the walmart section of the lot is an absolute nightmare to drive through even if it's not busy bc people drive too fast in the main arteries. we'd go out of our way to drive to del paso or even arden in-n-out to avoid that one. I'm curious to see how they're handling parking with the new construction over there.
about 1 year later, all that empty grassland surrounding the Natomas shopping area is now full of single-family homes with HOAs, and that one new apartment complex.
I went travelling in the west coast of US recently, and I can't deal with all these oversized parking lots and oversized stores. Its insane that to get to one store from another it takes me like 10 mins to walk. I felt like i was in a giant's house.
Another Sacramento area shopping center: the Sunrise Mall. It's a 100-acre development with 75 acres going to parking. On normal days the parking is at around 20% capacity, on black Friday for a few hours its around 50% capacity. What a waste of space.
@@justinxie9988 most malls are fading away, most are becoming strip malls it's because if how renting works and it's cheaper to rent a store then a place inside a mall
when parking lots are too big ppl tend to stop parking too far away from a store. ppl would rather drive around and around for a half hour looking for a closer spot than park more than a three minute walk away which is understandable if you're doing a day of shopping and aren't used to being active for that amount of time. some parking lots like those seen at festivals, large camp sites, etc. use rounds of shuttles to pick up people who are forced to park far away from the entrance or park a few miles down the road.
The most ridiculous example of this where I live- there is a "urban" shopping center near me that has very limited parking at street level. However, there is a massive parking garage underneath. People prefer to drive around waiting for spaces to open on the street level rather than going underground! Parking in the basement actually requires less walking but the desirability of parking close, even if it's just perception, is so engrained in the American mindset. It's truly aggravating! I purposefully park far from store entrances just to make a point lol
To me the saddest part of this video is just how similar this Northern California suburb looks to my local suburb in ohio… and I bet it looks the same as wherever you might live too. The North American suburban retail experience is identical no matter which city you’re in - or should I say 15 miles outside of.
@@cruzgomes5660 In my limited European experience (I spent about 3 months in Luxembourg this year for work), the biggest difference to me is that city sprawl is much less common. Large cities are urban to their city limits, then it becomes almost completely rural - compared to the US where you have a suburban landscape before you hit a rural landscape. The result was a denser, more walkable city. With that said, you will still have smaller towns outside of a larger one (Luxembourgish examples being Bettembourg or Dudelange), but these are stand alone towns with their own city centers/ walkable shopping areas. Luxembourg is interesting because public transit is free, and you can travel from one town to another via train.
@@cruzgomes5660 it's completely different... we don't rlly do malls (or at least rarely). cars are just not as relied on (we can't, bc a lot of places are rlly old, so smaller streets and no room for parking). there are some stores i know like ikea and the makro that have big parking lots, but it doesn't compare to the sizes seen in this video.
This is so true. This video shows what 90% of the US looks like. I've been on cross country trips. I swear the only thing that changes is the natural scenery. Almost everywhere, especially near interstates, is identical. It's not fun or interesting.
As an outsider traveling frequently to several cities in the US I can confirm that as soon as you drive out of a downtown area everything looks the same everywhere . you can count on finding the same businesses close to each other.
I'm really glad I found this video considering I was born and raised in the Sacramento area and have been to both of these malls many times! I have vivid memories of not being able to find a parking spot at the Roseville Galleria, and the day after Christmas (which was a big shopping day for my family) is usually even more crowded than Black Friday. However, I went to the Arden Fair Mall on Black Friday 2017 and was shocked at how dead the entire place was, although I'm pretty sure 2017 was a bad year for consumerism in general. Cool video! Thanks for sharing!
Sactown! I didnt realize that you were from around here! Its trippy to see a breakdown of the Galleria, ive driven past it my whole life and seen it grow and change. Thanks for the video!
Canada is like this with parking too, at least where there is big enough population to have supercentres. There is a place in Aurora Ontario where there are traffic lights in the parking lot!
The Walmart I work at in the suburbs has a near maxed out parking lot at certain times of the day. So does Costco(almost always on Saturdays), and nearly maxed out strip malls on normal days of the week. I feel like there is more parking but more crazy drivers on Black Friday IMO
As a German, this looks so strange too me. Black Friday is not a big deal here. Pun intended. To be honest, the shopping center looks to be very uncomfortable to get there, especially for residents of the city. There are just big roads and empty fields around this massive complex. This thing is wider than my home town, but still has so much empty asphalt plains.
It's all about normalizing the activity. If you're constantly in your car, you don't notice it. It's also much easier to justify for "the big savings," that come with the Black Friday deals.
@@flashsurfing Being stuck in traffic isn't comfortable. Americans complain constantly about it. Without realizing that the car-centricness they have inherently leads to inevitable congestion. Spending hundreds of millions widening roads doesn't fix the issue.
Roseville Galleria.......that “overflow parking” you were describing that is the Peir 1 lot..once Black Friday starts and through the New Year is actually a staff parking lot. There are two staff lots..the Pier 1 lot and the dirt lot behind the Macy’s parking structure (the 4 level structure) which employees take a shuttle from the dirt lot over to a few entrances around the perimeter the mall. THAT STAFF LOT WILL BE FULL WHETHER OR NOT IT IS BLACK FRIDAY. If staff is caught parking (due to their license plate) in the non designated lots their car can be towed. Staff is required to give their license plate to their managers prior to the holiday season. There are many tricks employees use to get around that, but that is the “rule”. I love that this is made in my home town and at places I’ve been countless times and have also worked at during the holidays but just wanted to make sure that this knowledge was out there for this study!!!!!!!!
I was in an IKEA recently (in Germany) that is located in the center of a large city (which is unusual for IKEAs also here). I went there by train and brought a suite case to transport some medium large items. They had a few thousand parking spaces left but only ~10 larger lockers that were all taken. That way, global warming will never be tackled. :-/ At least nearly all LEGO stores in Germany are in close proximity to large transit hubs. :-)
I wonder how many homes you could build on all the land those car parks take up (especially if they were all townhouses and flats), and how many people would actually drive if those shops were on the ground floor of the blocks of flats, connected by frequent public transport links (even an automated monorail or light metro, or more realistically, light rail or frequent bus/trolleybus routes)
I like how you think. It would definetly be better than the present situation! It would be a great idea to suggest this to local shopping malls (the ones with lots of parking)
Esteban Peral Ah, thanks. I think it would as well. The current set up just seems so wasteful, but I’m not sure what the owners and operators of the shopping centres would say if someone proposed it, and if it was proposed that if they really needed a shopping centre similar to the current setup, that the car parks were underground, under the retail floors.
I live in France and I always wonder why American parking lots are always free. I mean, I pay around 10 eur/3 hours of parking at a parking complex near the city center. As a result, we use cars only when going on long vacations, and use the public transportation for daily/weekly shoping.
I would have never imagined I'd find a video on parking so interesting! Awesome job with the scouting, analysis, and original research! The drone shots were super enlightening to follow along with.
It's not a waste, it's a financial decision by the property owner to attract retailers to rent space there. If the retailer doesn't have open air parking, I don't shop there.
The problem with this experiment is that it was conducted about 10 years too late. Black Friday has not only shifted online in recent years, but the shopping/sales season has been spread out over the course of October-December in response to logistical difficulties and Amazon's dominance in e-commerce. There just isn't the same emphasis on a single day of Black Friday anymore. I realize this video is from 2019, but if I remember correctly, that also happened to be the first year that pretty much all major retailers more or less declared the end of Black Friday as a single day. Many retailers that had previously opened for Thanksgiving stayed closed and went all-online with their doorbusters.
Nice use of a drone. Your video on the lifestyle malls was interesting to me because two were built in the Los Angeles area by developer Rick Caruso - an extension to the iconic Farmer’s Market on 3rd and Fairfax (as if that original, organic, collection of shops needed a fake mall attached to it!), and the Americana, built right next to the thriving Glendale Galleria. The fake streets around which both are built feel like Disneyland’s Main St, but less so… Universal Studios Burbank and Disneyland also have their fake streets, but hey, their original purpose was part of the entertainment theme. Thanks for sharing. Daniel
I remember a mall I use too go too as a child that was built forever ago in southern Massachusetts and they added like 20 more stores in the parking lot and an entire separate shopping center, and there’s still to much parking 😂
Once again the reason for all of our problems is our car based society. I wish someone would build a city like Pontevedra in America. It would be my dream to live in a carless city
on a complete side note, seeing when this video was filmed really made me appreciate how much I got to do the fall/winter of 2019, I miss the way the holiday season used to be.
In the end, the only practical alternative for big, bulky items like TV's or furniture is home delivery. Few people want to carry a heavy expensive item on public transport, even using something like an Uber or a taxi can be expensive and difficult if you have a lot of stuff. Perhaps the way forward to reduce car use is more of a "showroom" model, smaller stores where only display items are stocked and customers order for delivery in a day or so. That said, I can imagine there are still plenty of situations where you need the item immediately.
Well how are you going to get a bed or a couch or washer or dryer home without a truck in the 1st place??? As far as T.V. in resant times they've become as easier to carry on a bus then a sack of potatoes
We also have these huge sale deals in Bratislava, Slovakia, but thanks to a good public transport you don't have to own a car at all. Even the biggest regional shopping centre, Pandorf, located in Austria is easily accesible by train and walk and I've actually have a first hand expririence of discount shoping there via this method. Lack of parking lots will in my opinion eventually be a widespread and prestigeous eko trademark and the parking lots that will be left will undergone significant transformation to let the water trough and to support plants/solar panels over them.
@@5stardave It would be hard to find a person on our street which could fit a fridge in his or her car. Unless tying it to the roof you wouldn't be able to take it. Yes, we also tend to have smaller fridges in Europe, so you could fit one of those in standard european car, but even here it isn't as common nowadays to buy smaller fridge or freezer. Just as it is with washing machines, we use delivery service for bulky stuff quite readily.
Planting those trees are a lot of work too. I've done it. We take extra care to really line them up in straight lines. It isn't something you think about really. Not unless you've done it yourself.
I used to work at the Staples in the Natomas shopping center. Because the parking at this area was always so empty, people would drive their cars at speeds up to 50 miles per hour in the lot resulting in me almost ending up in a crash every time I went to work there. People also were way more aggressive drivers than where I was from closer to the downtown area where there was significantly more traffic.
In college, I studied a laboratory for an architecture project. Due to parking being based on floor area as opposed to occupancy, they had a parking three times the size they could ever possibly need, even if the building was at capacity. The only use for it was for dumping snow during winter.
At the Great Mall in the Bay Area, finding a parking spot on a regular day is bad you less you want to park far away from the door. On Black Friday, the parking lot is so crowded cars can barely move.
I live in Germany and five years ago, nearly nobody heard about Black Friday. Then a few big online stores started advertising for Black Friday. This year, nearly all stores, even the small and old-fashioned ones, were advertising some Black Friday deals and a lot of people I know were waiting until Black Friday to buy something because they wanted to get a good deal. However, most discounts at Black Friday in Germany are pseudo and you probably won't get any better deal than the rest of the year.
As someone from the UK, I can see a lot of wasted space in the car parks Take some tips from the UK, create a set of one way systems around the car park, this needs less space for the physical road meaning more parking spaces can fit in the area and secondly, you can reduce the queues at entrances and exits by making people travel around the car park rather than everyone trying to exit from every row. You also do not need a trolley/cart area every 5 spaces. In the UK it works out about 1 cart area for every 16 spaces.
I was wondering how large the parking lots were in practical terms so I tried comparing the parking lot of the Natomas Shopping Center with the parking space of the Efteling, the largest theme park in my home country the Netherlands. Bizarrely enough the regional mall has more parking space on its own than the largest parking lot I know. The comparison also drills home has far apart the shops are, with the large roads through the area making things even harder to walk. Are you expected to drive from one store to the next or something like that? www.google.com/maps/@38.6367001,-121.4986364,1080m/data=!3m1!1e3 www.google.com/maps/@51.6501077,5.0474177,992m/data=!3m1!1e3 And for further comparison a large mall/hopping center in the Netherlands on the same scale, it has a two story parking garage, a large concentration of furniture shops and XL stores: www.google.com/maps/@51.9496105,4.5585784,1014m/data=!3m1!1e3
You wouldn't probably drive from one end of the Target strip mall to the other, but you would definitely hop in the car to go to Best Buy or the Walmart. I actually counted all of the parking spaces in the Natomas area and it's over 5,000 spaces!
I've found that most shoppers go to the store they're interested in then leave the center. If it's an internal mall then they might go store to store. It's not like the 70s or 80s when masses of people went shopping purely for something to do. Now people do their shopping online and go to the stores to see the items in person.
I used to work at a supermarket located inside a shopping centre. The supermarket/shopping centre is located in a "rural town" (it's not really, it's 15 minutes away from a metro suburb with its own larger shopping centre), but I am guessing that the developers didn't take urban sprawl development into account. Prior to renovations to expand the carpark area, which was desperately needed, workers had to have parking permits displayed in front window of their car, or they would be fined. Post renovations, there's still not enough parking for customers and employees. It's possible these large carpark sizes are also taking employees needing to use a carpark as well, especially since an employee will use a carpark for a longer time.
I am in the Arden area, great video and so interesting to see an analysis of such a familiar place. It would be interesting to see the same type of analysis for arden arcade or the town center in El dorado hills.
Here in Europe city shopping centers have garages, and outdoor lots are only in the suburbs. They are packed more and more, so digital guidance system is a standard now. It has a sensor and a green/red LED light above each parking space and signs informing you about free spaces on each floor or aisle. These systems where not present five years ago, but now, they are a standard.
I'm increasingly beginning to realise that what I consider a mall and what certain parts of America consider a mall are every different. I am honestly taken aback at how flat and spread out these two shopping centres are. In my country, every single shopping centre I've been to (even the small ones) had several floors at a minimum, with parking often included in that verticality.
In my city (Melbourne) there is a fashion shopping center called "DFO Essendon". It's built on the side of an airport, it's directly next to a freeway, it's near the end of the freeway turning into a toll road. So, at 6pm when the store closes fairly early. Something very unique occurs. Everyone at the same time, exits the shopping center, and the cars are gridlocked for an hour trying to exit. To explain a little better, there is only one exit which is two lanes. Next to the exit is a roundabout. It ends up crammed full of cars and two roads of cars queue up to get out via the exit. One queue of cars has to give way to the other, so often cars from the give way queue double all the way back to get to the priority queue, and this see's the queue extending as far into the parking lot and snaking all the way around. The entire parking lot becomes impossible to get out of, and cars can't even get out of parking spaces.
I recently saw a study from Edmonton, Alberta about parking demand. Their result was basically you can not predict the demand at all, as there are way to many factors. Also they had around 50% peak usage on average, so massively overbuilt.
Here’s a suggestion for a vid: getting to these shopping centres by BUS?! Black or any other Friday. All I know is that seeing those sights of vast asphalt wastelands covered in individual petroleum-powered mobile dens, we are a LONG LONG way from even making a scratch in changing the lifestyle attitudes necessary to save the planet... 😢 3 degrees here we come! 😜
My family's Black Friday routine started around 11a-noon and shopping through the afternoon. The real crush is 6 AM to noon, and by going to mid-morning brunch at a diner before heading to the shops we got some good deals without so much of a crush of people. By 3PM, foot traffic was usually similar to a typical Saturday.
Special thanks to my Patreon patrons! Without their support I wouldn't have bought the drone to do the aerial footage with. Thanks Patrons!
Do you have a Part 107 Certificate (small Unmaned Areal Vehicle (sUAV))? You should have that FAA Pilot Certificate for flying your drone in support of a commercial enterprise. (Your UA-cam channel is a commercial enterprise). Another question is - is your drone registered with the FAA? It should be if it weighs over 250 grams (.55 lb).
what is with people backing into parking spaces SO MUCH? is this a California thing?
@@InconsistentManner You can back in while parking or back out when leaving. The benefit of backing in while parking is that you already have had a good view of surroundings (pedestrians or cars), so it seems safer if you are competent at backing up into a spot and won't ding the other cars. When leaving, the 10 seconds to get in your car, put your seatbelt on, and turn the car on means the circumstances may have changed with cars and pedestrians, and you need to be more cautious while backing out.
Also, backing in gives a nice setup to make a fast getaway in the event the parking lot is a ****show when leaving. 😜
12:58 looking forward to Kurzgesagt-style videos from CityBeautiful
Can you make an off topic video on how you became FAA-Certified Drone Pilot?
Why design our cities around a once-a-year shopping promotion. Maybe just have reasonably-sized parking lots and stores will just have to spread out their promotions. Would that be the end of the world?
I guess it's the same reason why Americans buy big, off road SUV's with bad fuel economics, just because of a "Just in case scenario" where they "need space" or "need to go offroad (which is even illegal where I'm from and yet American car makers still use it as a selling point)". It's just a case of Americans overpreparing for their own selfish needs, because god forbid if such security ever went into something like public transport, where you have to mingle with other people.
DrDewott well some of our roadways are so full of potholes that on road driving is more hazardous than off-road driving
James Davis It still doesn't mean you need a big SUV and must use it for every little errand.
@James Davis A station wagon? Or a hatchback? It's what we use in Europe without problems.... In my home country of the Netherlands the Volkwagen Golf and Volkswagen Polo are by far the most popular cars, and those are relatively small, especially when compared to the American crossovers, SUV's and trucks. And that is not because our roads are small or anything, our cities aren't Italian towns with super narrow roads.
@James Davis We can afford it aswell, we just choose not to.... Also, size of country doesn't matter at all when it comes to the car you choose. You can drive the same distance with a smart car as with a big semi-truck no problem. Imo, the US government should put big taxes on fuel because car use is just bad and should be discouraged whenever possible. The money gained should be put toward good public transport.
"I hoped into my mini van and made my way DEEP Into the suburbs" is the most 40 year old thing I've ever heard an non 40 year ever say.
I guess you've never seen any vanlife videos.
Other people on Black Friday: I’m going to get these deals!
This guy: did we over pave this parking lot?
Hey, sure beats going INTO the stores and dealing with the crowds!
City Beautiful dude I love your videos. You make city planning fun somehow 😂
Not gonna lie this is the stuff I think tho😂
I can hear Homer Simpson yell from a distance "neeeeeeerd!"
Thanks for being such a nerd.
Where I live, most people I know stock up on materials leading up to Black Friday to ensure that they don't have to go outside because they don't wanna get trampled
There should be requirements that make parking behind the stores so when you take public transit or catch a ride you don't have to walk through a massive parking lot
In my hometown, they pretty much did that in the old shopping mall (there are two shopping malls): they exapanded the building upon the front parking lot, which made it just a 50 metter walk from the bus stop in front of it. Most of the parking lot is behind the mall.
Why?
@@dude988 To make not driving easier, and to incentivise it. Parking areas are not nice to walk through.
@@peter_smyth They're also not safe to walk through
Lucas Slaughter but they are safe to drive though, and they are convenient too.
CB: "yo look at how big these parking lots are"
me: staring at the collosal roofs thinking about how easy it would be to put solar cells on top of them
More of this
or more parking lmao
those roofs are so flimsy they won;t hold a solar array . ever seen those buildings up close... "fancy front, rest is just bare minimum". even in side the ceilings would just be bare corrugated metal roofing. with airco ducts and other electrical / water conduits just in the open for all to see.
@@shrike6259 as they're currently built yes, but they can do better and that's what I was saying
@@shealupkes yeah I work at a Walmart and there’s roof access with warnings saying not to bring “sharp stuff or stomp and watching your step” on the roof cause it’ll cut/tear it. Also when it rains expect a bucket to be placed somewhere to catch water
why is there so much parking space for bars and drinking places when those people shouldn’t be driving ???
Because noone gives a fuck anyways.
You want your customers to be in your place, so the easiest way to attract anybody with a vehicle is a free, close by, parking spot.
bc American
Designated drivers, parking to get in in the first place
Also, there are laws about how many parking spaces a place needs.
my guess is just in case the bar closes and gets replaced by a restaurant or something (or used to be a restaurant and is now a bar)
Its so weird to me as an european. In America everything really is that big ×_× i mean y'all got parking lots bigger than our countries here xd lmaooo
Seriously!
@@CityBeautiful to be fare it does not take much to be bigger that the Vatican city in size
Sorta off topic but It makes me wonder why didn't the old empires, British french Spanish Germany, dutch, etc. Just move their entire empires to the new worlds like the americas, Africa's etc.
So much more space and resources to exploit. Not dense and reduce fighting when your not bordering 10 different countries, all competing for same land and resources.
Would there have been a need for wwi and WWII if the French controled present day Canada, present day USA remained British. Mexico = Spain, Brazil = Portugal, dutch and Germany would carve up the Africa's for themselves.... Or British moves to South Africa or Australia New Zealand etc.
Instead we had centuries of fighting for power, ego, ideologies land and resources
@@malcolmholmes2596 nothing in new world to move too only hostile Indigenous population who will not accept your rule. When there is something, people already moved here kicked out the old monarchs.
Everything is twisted when you have an economy running on the assumption (reality) that each person buys and burns polluting gasoline in order to lug a gigantic, 2500-to-4500-pound piece of metal, glass, and rubber to work, to the store etc.
I knew there are a lot of parking lots, but HOLY SHIT THIS IS A LOT OF PARKING.
Really glad Germany isn't as car reliant as the USA.
well....
Moksum it really isn’t that much parking though. Europe is pathetic with its parking lots. And euro sprawl is hideous. In America you can get a gorgeous house with a perfectly manicured lawn relatively cheaply in many suburbs but in Europe the houses are small and ugly and the lots look wild and untamed. But you still have sprawl which = need for cars. You guys just have really shitty sprawl
@@LucasFernandez-fk8se I think you havent heard about public transportation yet
in Germany you can take the S Bahn from the suburbs to the main city in every big city
Lucas Fernandez Who needs a lawn when you can walk to work and the city is your backyard?
Well at least we, unlike a lot of places in the US, have buses that leave pretty regularly that we can hop onto. I mean I live in a tiny town of just 2000 people but we still have a bus every hour that goes to the train station, where there's an S Bahn train every 10 minutes into the metropolis.
What you should take away from this: drones are useful for finding empty parking spots
Didn't really seem to be an issue though where he was filming.
I imagine all lifestyle centers are just future failed lifestyle centers.
Maybe the Promenade is just ahead of its time.
City Beautiful The town near me is building a massive "Promenade" anchored by a Costco. Nothing walkable outside of the Promenade either. 🙃
Hey kid, you like all the worst things of a strip mall combined with the worst things of a regular mall? No? Well I guess you're not cool enough for our "lifestyle center".
Nothing can beat a vibrant downtown with mixed use development. Really all they need to do to make it work for suburbia is build parking garages on the edge of downtown so suburbanites can drive to downtown but not through it. A great example is Naperville, Illinois.
SODOSOPA
😂
This video makes me very grateful that I live in Europe. Designing everything based on cars makes cities inconvenient and so ugly. I hope the city planning in America will catch on and enable more ways to move about than just cars. It's better for health, environment and IMHO for the people themselves: less traffic, less road rage, more exercise, more human contacts.
We should never forget that most American towns were once much like European towns. Then they started tearing buildings down to build roads and car parks.
Everything has it’s pros and cons, but I wouldn’t mind going back to public transport. I didn’t get a car until Senior year of college so I rode a lot of busses.
I am not an expert on city planning, but this is a really interesting topic! I think it would depend on the size of the city and the community surrounding. So much of the U.S. is rural. Where I grew up it was a 20 mile drive to the nearest small city (there were a few small towns closer) and the nearest full size grocery store. There was absolutely no public transportation because the 'neighborhood" was all cornfields. You can't even get Uber or a taxi to come out that far. The cities have to accommodate cars because public transportation is an expensive service to provide when traveling such a great distance for such a small amount of travelers. I agree that it's ugly and bad for the environment! I would love to see more public transportation options available. I just don't see that happening when a car is so convenient. Most people are not going to walk a mile and wait for 20 minutes at a bus stop to take a bus into town that stops 4 more times, making their 30 minute drive take even longer, just to get into town and have to walk from the bus stop to their final destination - not to mention having to carry groceries or supplies all that way. People are lazy and like just hopping in their car, driving exactly where they need to go and driving home, no walking and no waiting. Again I wish this weren't the case, terrible for our planet, but the U.S. is so built around individual vehicle transport that it would be difficult to change I would think. I'm curious what others think.
@@reach4it310 Start by remembering that American cities have already been transformed once... by demolishing town centres, driving 'car sewers' through housing areas (mainly inhabited by Afro-Americans but that is another story), building segregated and car dependent suburbs... This transformation was driven by well intentioned people who probably didn't realise that they were being manipulated.
American cities did not grow 'organically' as many European cities. They were planned, financed and managed ... largely with a few to increasing profits. If cities can be rebuilt once they can be rebuilt again.
@@TheAmazingHuman-Man the main problem with public transportation in america especially systems like bart is the lack of cleanliness and security. Bart is often filled with homeless and junkies on the trains and vagrants. if they can clean these systems up and put a a couple of police at every station then more people would use it. the image of public transportation here needs to change inorder to make it viable.
And car parks aren't in vanilla Cities Skylines!
Iirc not even with DLCs either. You need to mod them.
Low density buildings often have a few parking spaces built in, but yeah not for high density. Seems like an a pretty important feature
You don't need parking when your car disappears on arrival.
It seems that people don't know what vanilla means. 😂
a man of culture i see
I dream of walking a block from my apt and buying something I need instead of trying to determine if its worth the drive, traffic, gas, and risk of an accident. Maybe its just me but the last one usually keeps me from taking the car. Not the potential of being injured but the hassle that comes with it. So. many. cars!!!
I can walk to most of the shops I need on a daily or weekly basis, in a bout 5 minutes.
I can bike to all the shops in my city in about 20 minutes. I might take a bus in bad weather.
I live near the edge of Groningen, a city of about 200.000 in the Netherlands.
I find American city planning to be an eye sore.
@@rogerwilco2 stop! I can only get so jealous. 5 min for me to get to the corner store. Not back. To get there and buy. Maybe one day the block will be more compact. 3 storied housing with mix use buildings sprinkled throughout. A cat can dream.
I live on a square in Gothenburg, Sweden and within a 10 minute walk I can go to 5 everyday shops, 30 restaurants/cafes/bars, 1 24/7 open 7-eleven with a gas station, and several barbers, fish shops (Gothenburg is on the west cost.), tech shops, etc. Even though I live 5 km or 20 tram ride from the city center.
Gothenburg is the second largest city in Sweden with a population of around 600'000 (1,2 million if with suburbs.).
20 min tram ride*
I am 23 and only one person in my family owns a car, my uncle who sometimes lives in Texas.
5:45
I've been told that bars require lots of parking because it lowers to amount of bar patrons utilizing street parking. This is important because street parking often have time/hour restrictions and, in theory, pressures people to drive their cars away instead of leaving the car behind overnight and picking it up the next day.
Its propably better to just be able to walk to the bar tho, or be allowed to drink in public.
Not necessarily . A lot of people just take an Uber or taxi both ways
Imho the only thing a bar needs is a kiss-and-ride/stop-and-go lane where people can get in a taxi or Uber... Why exactly should we accommodate for people to arrive in their own car when they want to go drinking again?
Bars shoud have no parking because you should NEVER DRIVE TO OR FROM THEM BECAUSE THAT IS DANGEROUS, just walk to the bar instead.
@@crazymonkeyVIIwhy they need is to be located in such a place that you can walk there.
Target has installed solar panels on the roofs of 500 of its stores. I would hope that the other big box retailers start doing this.
Yeah, I was happy to see some solar panels!
Geez...PG&E still cannot keep the power on...
Geoph C it looks like Home Depot did the same.
Not big box but I assume Aldi and Trader Joe's (which is actually also just Aldi but Aldi North) might follow soon if they haven't already. Aldi North already installs them in or rather on their new remodelled stores in Germany.
Parking lots are the most ugliest eye shore ever! Nothing else has RUINED cities and architecture more than ever! Worst of all they are mandated! We must avoid the policies of Sprawl and Smart Growth!
This is an unrealistic expectation in suburbia.
Yeah the parking lots don't even look that good. At least in my country many parking lots will have bushes and trees in between the long rows of cars, making it feel at least a bit more natural. Other than that, Adequate public transport would be needed for anyone who doesn't have a car to benefit at all from this. Like what if a grandma wants to take her grandchildren to see a movie? What are the odds that a person that old can even drive a car safely, that's a huge risk to the safety of themselves and the people around them! And I don't think she would be able to walk that well all the way through a big parking lot either.
I live in a city in the Czech Republic, most 'mall parking' is located and built underground in order to combat this very problem.
Underground parking lots are a better idea. They are more expensive to build of course, but they take way less space than normal parking lots. Its very common where I live, but in the US, they probably dont build them due to their abundance of space.
The best parking lot if no parking lot. In many centres of Dutch cities are carfree. Yet they attract more customers, who come by bicycle, foot, or public transport. The Dutch government also forbade big box stores, so stores are always in residential areas. Close by, so they can reached on foot or bicycle.
At the country club:
Melvin: _(puffs on his briar pipe)_ "Jerry, wouldn't it be grand if we could watch crowds of poors fight each once per year?"
Jerry: _(takes a sip of brandy)_ "Splendid idea, Melvin. We'll just sell those boxes they all watch at slightly above cost!"
Both: _sensible chuckling_
I laughed at the last line.
Am I one of them? 😳
You think country-club level "rich" people are making the decisions of big corporations and influence how regular people behave?
What the f are you even trying to talk about?
Meanwhile here in the Netherlands we just need more space for bicycles.
I bet id hate living in the Netherlands. I dislike bykes I walk or take public transport.
We need more bicycle space everywhere
@@khulhucthulhu9952 You just need to reduce the ammoun of room for cars. If trafic gets worse fewer people will driwe. And that space can be used for other things.
You can put 10× more bikes where you can normally put one car, so getting space for bikes is easier
@Jason Lane Screw not being overweight, screw poor people being able to get where they need to go.
Even though it's off topic, have you noticed how car colors are poor nowadays? Miss the old day when you had a colorful traffic.
Exactly. Especially until the 80s. Cars back then were just made to be colored gleefully.
Hiw Graji Du Suw
They were also made from actual metal back then.
@@matthew8153 I don't mind plastic in cars when it's done well, because it's a light material that is pretty rugged. But now a days especially american or german cars look like plastic toys
I don't mind people having boring colored cars. Makes it really easy to find my green car in the parking lots
Let’s make a law that demands car makers and buyers to be more colorful
“The only good reason to go to a mall: the LEGO store” 😂😂
I haven't used my legos in years (in fact, I think I gave them to my sister), but it's still the only reason I would consider going to a mall
The Lego store and the candy store are the only reasons to go to the mall
The biggest parking lot's where I live would probably be considered average by American standards.
The biggest parking lot I've ever been in is Disney World. You park there and they pick you up in a tram. You're not walking to the main gate. Not unless you brought a camel with you to make the trek over the tractless desert of blacktop between you and it.
And it's an asphalt jungle. Meanwhile all the amusement park parking lots where I'm from are 90% gravel with trees and bushes in between the rows
I would call these parking lots as below the average parking lot size, probably because of the high cost of land in California. Parking lots in the South and some states in mid West are much larger than this.
Natomas being more empty may have had something to do with being there later in the day. 3 PM is a bit late on Black Friday due to how retailers structure the timings of their black Friday deals. I'm also curious about usages on the last weekend before Christmas, which is iirc close in terms of sheer volume of shoppers and sales to Black Friday.
That truck's parking at 0:45 is giving me anxiety.
That's people for ya
Glad I'm not the only person who spotted this
@ If you make smaller trucks, then you'll see them parked everywhere.
If you make bigger parking spots, you'll see more bigger trucks occupying those spots.
Smaller trucks may be the best option of the two, but none truly solves the problem.
You also have to take into consideration that this year’s Black Friday was a lackluster one compared to those of yesteryear.
Yesteryear. A word I did not know exists. ☺️
Drn LOL😁
But a pretty busy one compared to the next year, as it turned out.
@@Codrarolloh you’re so right
Black Friday? That doesn’t happen in my country, too capitalist for innocent minds
Um you know Korea don't favor capitalism much
Nevermind miss interpreted
They build roads for only a few vehicles to ride on them
Every friday is black friday: nothing left in the shelves.
Pedro Marcelino our great leader's capitalist holiday is THE VERY BEST, he is expert at keeping the shelves completely sold out
It's nice to see your study I heard a few years back Walmart was trying to convert some of there extra parking lots into extra retail development .I myself think that those extra parking spaces could be more useful if there was some form of residential development
Jag2112707 who wants to live in an apartment? Especially one with views of a Walmart.
Wal-Mart employees shouldn't mind the view. Talk about a quick commute.
Walmart in the US have become the most common overnight homeless living in cars parking lots
Leave to Walmart to try to squeeze a dollar out of every square inch of property.
In my city the nearest Walmart, built 20 years ago, has a too-small parking lot. They realized it would be too small but were hemmed in.
Another thing to consider when looking at parking spaces is that in general the amount of people going to stores has been declining due to online sales
He mentioned that at 11:35
Chris614 thanks for the time stamp
10:05 I'm so glad to see all those trees in the parking lot I wish all retailers did this
thatcoolkidjoey it’s actually terrible. It blocks you from pulling through a space, makes longer vehicles stick out in the lane, and doesn’t let longer vehicles park.
In some states and localities it’s a requirement to have a certain amount of foliage in parking lots. It’s certainly that way In Arizona, USA
What drives me crazy is that the tree plot takes up a small part of the parking lot, and so some lots are smaller than others.
No, they’re horrible. Tree sap falls onto your car and is a pain to get off
@@x-90that’s the law in many cases and places;
good luck if you’re going to take up the challenge!
Great Video! I would really be interested in a follow-up. As a European myself, I think refitting car-exclusive suburban environments is the biggest challenge in US Urbanism in the 21st century. Would be really interesting to hear more about upzoning, densifying etc. of US suburbia.
Yes! I'm sure I'll make a video about that at some point. Until then, I'd recommend checking out the book: Retrofitting Suburbia.
@@CityBeautiful I like the video, interesting to see a theory relate to practice!
I'm thinking along similar lines, also for context I am UK based. Albeit with some knowledge (but not vast amounts) of UK transport planning codes from my civil engineering degree, I'm always astonished by the "minimum car parking requirements" which enforces a car culture (often with expensive vehicles which cost lots to run (fuel/maintenance/tax/insurance)).
I don't have a car; I cycle pretty much everywhere (but am a passenger in my parents car for big family outings). I cycle because it is quicker, more convenient and cheaper than any other mode of transport (nb. being quick is not necessarily the same as convenience, although they are often linked e.g. a car could in theory be quicker but less convenient due to limited city centre parking at work).
An interesting video would be what needs to happen in the US to improve the speed / convenience / cost / other attributes of better transport solutions (bikes / buses / rail / trams / car share / public transport etc.). Has this been implemented, is there a current best practice, what there ideas are there, and probably most importantly, what do the local population think/how have they changed their habits?
There are many suburbs that only want single family housing. The state government of California has gotten so fed up with this blocking of higher density, especially near heavy transit, that it is overriding local rules. The eruptions have been interesting to watch.
The constitution of the US only recognizes the federal and state governments and the people. Cities are creations of the state. I think they are going to lose this one.
@@danielcarroll3358 Most zoning codes in the suburbs make building anything other than single family housing often simply impossible. It's really crazy, especially when there is plenty of demand for walkable suburbs.
As an American I really resent you smug European attitude of wanting to re-shape my country to be more like yours. It's really none of your business. Many Americans do NOT want to live in more dense environments. Who the hell do you think you are?
People call Americans arrogant, when it's the Europeans who are the freakin textbook definition of the word.
Well, "Black Friday" kinda ends around Noon - 1:00pm in most cases so going to see after 3:00pm probably isn't a very accurate observation.
Jordan Hamann I was about to comment the same thing. Checking the parking lot at 3pm would be like checking it on any other day close to the holidays. Everyone has gone home at that point.
@@MissMusical74 in europe peeps shop in the evening
i shop at the natomas shopping center and i always wondered why the lot was so darn big when everyone pretty much just goes to target...
also the walmart section of the lot is an absolute nightmare to drive through even if it's not busy bc people drive too fast in the main arteries. we'd go out of our way to drive to del paso or even arden in-n-out to avoid that one. I'm curious to see how they're handling parking with the new construction over there.
Wow I live in Sacramento and its hella dope a UA-camr is from here!!
We have a Costco that was built in the 1990's and every Saturday and Sunday is like Black Friday in the parking lot.
Sam's too
about 1 year later, all that empty grassland surrounding the Natomas shopping area is now full of single-family homes with HOAs, and that one new apartment complex.
*How much parking space so you want?*
USA: YES!!!
This video gave me so much nostalgia as when I was a kid I lived in Roseville so this is the first time I've seen those shopping districts in 10 years
I went travelling in the west coast of US recently, and I can't deal with all these oversized parking lots and oversized stores. Its insane that to get to one store from another it takes me like 10 mins to walk. I felt like i was in a giant's house.
Lincoln Town Car in a "compact" spot. Nice.
Another Sacramento area shopping center: the Sunrise Mall. It's a 100-acre development with 75 acres going to parking. On normal days the parking is at around 20% capacity, on black Friday for a few hours its around 50% capacity. What a waste of space.
The Sunrise Mall is a dead mall though.
@@justinxie9988 most malls are fading away, most are becoming strip malls it's because if how renting works and it's cheaper to rent a store then a place inside a mall
Fantastic video brother please keep up the great work informing us of stuff we never knew we needed to know lol
And you have traffic patterns as in 6:52 the drive though line is making a section of parking not usable.
In N Out is actually pretty efficient, and that's not even a long line by their standards!
when parking lots are too big ppl tend to stop parking too far away from a store. ppl would rather drive around and around for a half hour looking for a closer spot than park more than a three minute walk away which is understandable if you're doing a day of shopping and aren't used to being active for that amount of time. some parking lots like those seen at festivals, large camp sites, etc. use rounds of shuttles to pick up people who are forced to park far away from the entrance or park a few miles down the road.
The most ridiculous example of this where I live- there is a "urban" shopping center near me that has very limited parking at street level. However, there is a massive parking garage underneath. People prefer to drive around waiting for spaces to open on the street level rather than going underground! Parking in the basement actually requires less walking but the desirability of parking close, even if it's just perception, is so engrained in the American mindset. It's truly aggravating! I purposefully park far from store entrances just to make a point lol
To me the saddest part of this video is just how similar this Northern California suburb looks to my local suburb in ohio… and I bet it looks the same as wherever you might live too.
The North American suburban retail experience is identical no matter which city you’re in - or should I say 15 miles outside of.
I wonder how the European suburban experience compares
@@cruzgomes5660 In my limited European experience (I spent about 3 months in Luxembourg this year for work), the biggest difference to me is that city sprawl is much less common. Large cities are urban to their city limits, then it becomes almost completely rural - compared to the US where you have a suburban landscape before you hit a rural landscape. The result was a denser, more walkable city. With that said, you will still have smaller towns outside of a larger one (Luxembourgish examples being Bettembourg or Dudelange), but these are stand alone towns with their own city centers/ walkable shopping areas. Luxembourg is interesting because public transit is free, and you can travel from one town to another via train.
@@cruzgomes5660 it's completely different... we don't rlly do malls (or at least rarely). cars are just not as relied on (we can't, bc a lot of places are rlly old, so smaller streets and no room for parking). there are some stores i know like ikea and the makro that have big parking lots, but it doesn't compare to the sizes seen in this video.
This is so true. This video shows what 90% of the US looks like. I've been on cross country trips. I swear the only thing that changes is the natural scenery. Almost everywhere, especially near interstates, is identical. It's not fun or interesting.
As an outsider traveling frequently to several cities in the US I can confirm that as soon as you drive out of a downtown area everything looks the same everywhere . you can count on finding the same businesses close to each other.
I'm really glad I found this video considering I was born and raised in the Sacramento area and have been to both of these malls many times! I have vivid memories of not being able to find a parking spot at the Roseville Galleria, and the day after Christmas (which was a big shopping day for my family) is usually even more crowded than Black Friday. However, I went to the Arden Fair Mall on Black Friday 2017 and was shocked at how dead the entire place was, although I'm pretty sure 2017 was a bad year for consumerism in general. Cool video! Thanks for sharing!
When I came back from the Tokyo metro area to suburban NorCal our parking lots seemed bonkers huge. (Also, our party sized chips packs)
Sactown! I didnt realize that you were from around here! Its trippy to see a breakdown of the Galleria, ive driven past it my whole life and seen it grow and change. Thanks for the video!
Good thing you decided to do this in 2019 and didn't say "Nah, I'll wait until next year".
Canada is like this with parking too, at least where there is big enough population to have supercentres. There is a place in Aurora Ontario where there are traffic lights in the parking lot!
The Walmart I work at in the suburbs has a near maxed out parking lot at certain times of the day. So does Costco(almost always on Saturdays), and nearly maxed out strip malls on normal days of the week. I feel like there is more parking but more crazy drivers on Black Friday IMO
3PM is usually the wind down of Black Friday for any big box store. You should have gone in the morning when it was actually busy.
As a German, this looks so strange too me. Black Friday is not a big deal here. Pun intended.
To be honest, the shopping center looks to be very uncomfortable to get there, especially for residents of the city.
There are just big roads and empty fields around this massive complex. This thing is wider than my home town, but still has so much empty asphalt plains.
It's all about normalizing the activity. If you're constantly in your car, you don't notice it. It's also much easier to justify for "the big savings," that come with the Black Friday deals.
These shopping malls are comfortable for residents to get there by car, and mostly serve suburban residents.
@@flashsurfing Being stuck in traffic isn't comfortable. Americans complain constantly about it. Without realizing that the car-centricness they have inherently leads to inevitable congestion. Spending hundreds of millions widening roads doesn't fix the issue.
Roseville Galleria.......that “overflow parking” you were describing that is the Peir 1 lot..once Black Friday starts and through the New Year is actually a staff parking lot. There are two staff lots..the Pier 1 lot and the dirt lot behind the Macy’s parking structure (the 4 level structure) which employees take a shuttle from the dirt lot over to a few entrances around the perimeter the mall. THAT STAFF LOT WILL BE FULL WHETHER OR NOT IT IS BLACK FRIDAY. If staff is caught parking (due to their license plate) in the non designated lots their car can be towed. Staff is required to give their license plate to their managers prior to the holiday season. There are many tricks employees use to get around that, but that is the “rule”.
I love that this is made in my home town and at places I’ve been countless times and have also worked at during the holidays but just wanted to make sure that this knowledge was out there for this study!!!!!!!!
I was in an IKEA recently (in Germany) that is located in the center of a large city (which is unusual for IKEAs also here). I went there by train and brought a suite case to transport some medium large items. They had a few thousand parking spaces left but only ~10 larger lockers that were all taken. That way, global warming will never be tackled. :-/
At least nearly all LEGO stores in Germany are in close proximity to large transit hubs. :-)
I wonder how many homes you could build on all the land those car parks take up (especially if they were all townhouses and flats), and how many people would actually drive if those shops were on the ground floor of the blocks of flats, connected by frequent public transport links (even an automated monorail or light metro, or more realistically, light rail or frequent bus/trolleybus routes)
I like how you think. It would definetly be better than the present situation! It would be a great idea to suggest this to local shopping malls (the ones with lots of parking)
Esteban Peral Ah, thanks. I think it would as well. The current set up just seems so wasteful, but I’m not sure what the owners and operators of the shopping centres would say if someone proposed it, and if it was proposed that if they really needed a shopping centre similar to the current setup, that the car parks were underground, under the retail floors.
"I may make a follow up study."
Laughs in 2020
I live in France and I always wonder why American parking lots are always free. I mean, I pay around 10 eur/3 hours of parking at a parking complex near the city center. As a result, we use cars only when going on long vacations, and use the public transportation for daily/weekly shoping.
Thanksgiving isn't a thing in Ireland but Black Friday is growing in popularity!
We apologize.
Im sorry for you.
Why am I not surprised
I would have never imagined I'd find a video on parking so interesting! Awesome job with the scouting, analysis, and original research! The drone shots were super enlightening to follow along with.
I have never seen so much open-air parking in my life... Here parking is mostly underground or rooftops. Why do Americans waste so much space?
When you have a lot of land, it's cheaper to just spread out the parking than build something special for underground or rooftop parking.
It's not a waste, it's a financial decision by the property owner to attract retailers to rent space there. If the retailer doesn't have open air parking, I don't shop there.
That's one hell of a weird standard to have...
😂🤣🤣😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 "so much space"
The problem with this experiment is that it was conducted about 10 years too late. Black Friday has not only shifted online in recent years, but the shopping/sales season has been spread out over the course of October-December in response to logistical difficulties and Amazon's dominance in e-commerce. There just isn't the same emphasis on a single day of Black Friday anymore. I realize this video is from 2019, but if I remember correctly, that also happened to be the first year that pretty much all major retailers more or less declared the end of Black Friday as a single day. Many retailers that had previously opened for Thanksgiving stayed closed and went all-online with their doorbusters.
And in Europe we have a maximun number of parking spaces...
which country?
@@correctionguy7632 Germany.
@@darealmeesta we do?
@@dude988 At least in Berlin, from what I know. Keep in mind i am no expert on that matter.
"I hopped into my mini van" shows a car longer than most I've seen so far
Where do this parking space requirement come from? You can thank the Car Companies Lobbyists.
Nice use of a drone.
Your video on the lifestyle malls was interesting to me because two were built in the Los Angeles area by developer Rick Caruso - an extension to the iconic Farmer’s Market on 3rd and Fairfax (as if that original, organic, collection of shops needed a fake mall attached to it!), and the Americana, built right next to the thriving Glendale Galleria.
The fake streets around which both are built feel like Disneyland’s Main St, but less so… Universal Studios Burbank and Disneyland also have their fake streets, but hey, their original purpose was part of the entertainment theme. Thanks for sharing. Daniel
0:55 Seeing that there are cars parked on the grass, I'm going to guess that they did not build overbuild their parking.
Yeah
I remember a mall I use too go too as a child that was built forever ago in southern Massachusetts and they added like 20 more stores in the parking lot and an entire separate shopping center, and there’s still to much parking 😂
Once again the reason for all of our problems is our car based society.
I wish someone would build a city like Pontevedra in America. It would be my dream to live in a carless city
You might be exaggerating
Move to the Amish then
@@dude988 completely missing the point
@@thedriverisliterallyme5331 they don't have cars. Go, live your dream without forcing it on others.
I wish I could find a pedestrian-less city. All the restaurants and businesses would be drive-thrus.
on a complete side note, seeing when this video was filmed really made me appreciate how much I got to do the fall/winter of 2019, I miss the way the holiday season used to be.
In the end, the only practical alternative for big, bulky items like TV's or furniture is home delivery. Few people want to carry a heavy expensive item on public transport, even using something like an Uber or a taxi can be expensive and difficult if you have a lot of stuff. Perhaps the way forward to reduce car use is more of a "showroom" model, smaller stores where only display items are stocked and customers order for delivery in a day or so. That said, I can imagine there are still plenty of situations where you need the item immediately.
I recall when I got my printer it was the only box in a big truck.
@@catprog Hopefully that was because you were last on the route.
@@Croz89 Seeing as though it was 6pmish I am thinking so.
Well how are you going to get a bed or a couch or washer or dryer home without a truck in the 1st place??? As far as T.V. in resant times they've become as easier to carry on a bus then a sack of potatoes
@@carlgharis7948 Well you really can't carry either on a bus very well, but the TV is likely to be simply too large rather than too heavy.
We also have these huge sale deals in Bratislava, Slovakia, but thanks to a good public transport you don't have to own a car at all. Even the biggest regional shopping centre, Pandorf, located in Austria is easily accesible by train and walk and I've actually have a first hand expririence of discount shoping there via this method. Lack of parking lots will in my opinion eventually be a widespread and prestigeous eko trademark and the parking lots that will be left will undergone significant transformation to let the water trough and to support plants/solar panels over them.
So what's it like taking home a refrigerator on public transportation?
@@5stardave It would be hard to find a person on our street which could fit a fridge in his or her car. Unless tying it to the roof you wouldn't be able to take it. Yes, we also tend to have smaller fridges in Europe, so you could fit one of those in standard european car, but even here it isn't as common nowadays to buy smaller fridge or freezer. Just as it is with washing machines, we use delivery service for bulky stuff quite readily.
1:59. Naturally that would be the only reason to go to a mall
Amazing! I’d love to see a comparison next year
Alternate title: “What This Video Shows Us About the Importance of Background Music”
Indeed. The content was interesting, but the video would be vastly improved by having background music.
Yuck I hate background music
The last thing this video needs is some stock Ukelele + whistling muzak
Really liked the drone footage, nice video
the atrocity of those parking lot trees. so sad
Planting those trees are a lot of work too. I've done it. We take extra care to really line them up in straight lines. It isn't something you think about really. Not unless you've done it yourself.
I used to work at the Staples in the Natomas shopping center. Because the parking at this area was always so empty, people would drive their cars at speeds up to 50 miles per hour in the lot resulting in me almost ending up in a crash every time I went to work there. People also were way more aggressive drivers than where I was from closer to the downtown area where there was significantly more traffic.
1:33
Me, a European: *shivers at the placement of trollies*
In college, I studied a laboratory for an architecture project. Due to parking being based on floor area as opposed to occupancy, they had a parking three times the size they could ever possibly need, even if the building was at capacity. The only use for it was for dumping snow during winter.
i love these aerial shots! american cities looks so tidy compared to where i live in south east asia lol, its so messy here
Thank you for the video!
Lol when he tried to say “Kurzgesagt” 😂😂😂
Ugh, that was my best of like five tries.
City Beautiful hahahah I laughed but I’d not know how to say it either. Btw, keep up the great work, much love from Brazil!
At the Great Mall in the Bay Area, finding a parking spot on a regular day is bad you less you want to park far away from the door. On Black Friday, the parking lot is so crowded cars can barely move.
The Great Mall is a transit center and soon a BART station, and the stores deliver the big stuff.
SMH at the guy taking up 4ish spaces at 00:46
I live in Germany and five years ago, nearly nobody heard about Black Friday. Then a few big online stores started advertising for Black Friday. This year, nearly all stores, even the small and old-fashioned ones, were advertising some Black Friday deals and a lot of people I know were waiting until Black Friday to buy something because they wanted to get a good deal. However, most discounts at Black Friday in Germany are pseudo and you probably won't get any better deal than the rest of the year.
Hello fellow Sacramento UA-cam channel!
As someone from the UK, I can see a lot of wasted space in the car parks
Take some tips from the UK, create a set of one way systems around the car park, this needs less space for the physical road meaning more parking spaces can fit in the area and secondly, you can reduce the queues at entrances and exits by making people travel around the car park rather than everyone trying to exit from every row.
You also do not need a trolley/cart area every 5 spaces. In the UK it works out about 1 cart area for every 16 spaces.
I was wondering how large the parking lots were in practical terms so I tried comparing the parking lot of the Natomas Shopping Center with the parking space of the Efteling, the largest theme park in my home country the Netherlands. Bizarrely enough the regional mall has more parking space on its own than the largest parking lot I know. The comparison also drills home has far apart the shops are, with the large roads through the area making things even harder to walk. Are you expected to drive from one store to the next or something like that?
www.google.com/maps/@38.6367001,-121.4986364,1080m/data=!3m1!1e3
www.google.com/maps/@51.6501077,5.0474177,992m/data=!3m1!1e3
And for further comparison a large mall/hopping center in the Netherlands on the same scale, it has a two story parking garage, a large concentration of furniture shops and XL stores:
www.google.com/maps/@51.9496105,4.5585784,1014m/data=!3m1!1e3
You wouldn't probably drive from one end of the Target strip mall to the other, but you would definitely hop in the car to go to Best Buy or the Walmart. I actually counted all of the parking spaces in the Natomas area and it's over 5,000 spaces!
My family usually drives from one part of a strip mall to another part in the US.
I've found that most shoppers go to the store they're interested in then leave the center. If it's an internal mall then they might go store to store. It's not like the 70s or 80s when masses of people went shopping purely for something to do. Now people do their shopping online and go to the stores to see the items in person.
I used to work at a supermarket located inside a shopping centre. The supermarket/shopping centre is located in a "rural town" (it's not really, it's 15 minutes away from a metro suburb with its own larger shopping centre), but I am guessing that the developers didn't take urban sprawl development into account. Prior to renovations to expand the carpark area, which was desperately needed, workers had to have parking permits displayed in front window of their car, or they would be fined. Post renovations, there's still not enough parking for customers and employees. It's possible these large carpark sizes are also taking employees needing to use a carpark as well, especially since an employee will use a carpark for a longer time.
5:31 "ATM machine" = automated teller machine machine
I am in the Arden area, great video and so interesting to see an analysis of such a familiar place. It would be interesting to see the same type of analysis for arden arcade or the town center in El dorado hills.
Here in Europe city shopping centers have garages, and outdoor lots are only in the suburbs. They are packed more and more, so digital guidance system is a standard now. It has a sensor and a green/red LED light above each parking space and signs informing you about free spaces on each floor or aisle. These systems where not present five years ago, but now, they are a standard.
TV: on sale
Shoppers: *stampede*
I'm increasingly beginning to realise that what I consider a mall and what certain parts of America consider a mall are every different. I am honestly taken aback at how flat and spread out these two shopping centres are. In my country, every single shopping centre I've been to (even the small ones) had several floors at a minimum, with parking often included in that verticality.
12:16 Thank you for using the word "Hypothesis" instead of those idiots who don't know what and use the word "Theory".
In my city (Melbourne) there is a fashion shopping center called "DFO Essendon".
It's built on the side of an airport, it's directly next to a freeway, it's near the end of the freeway turning into a toll road. So, at 6pm when the store closes fairly early. Something very unique occurs. Everyone at the same time, exits the shopping center, and the cars are gridlocked for an hour trying to exit.
To explain a little better, there is only one exit which is two lanes. Next to the exit is a roundabout. It ends up crammed full of cars and two roads of cars queue up to get out via the exit. One queue of cars has to give way to the other, so often cars from the give way queue double all the way back to get to the priority queue, and this see's the queue extending as far into the parking lot and snaking all the way around. The entire parking lot becomes impossible to get out of, and cars can't even get out of parking spaces.
Dude I’ve never seen a parking lot that huge here in Europe, blows my mind
American dont walk hence they are fat. Symple.
I recently saw a study from Edmonton, Alberta about parking demand. Their result was basically you can not predict the demand at all, as there are way to many factors. Also they had around 50% peak usage on average, so massively overbuilt.
Here’s a suggestion for a vid: getting to these shopping centres by BUS?! Black or any other Friday.
All I know is that seeing those sights of vast asphalt wastelands covered in individual petroleum-powered mobile dens, we are a LONG LONG way from even making a scratch in changing the lifestyle attitudes necessary to save the planet... 😢
3 degrees here we come! 😜
Screw the planet. We all only go around once. So I'm going around in style and comfort.
My family's Black Friday routine started around 11a-noon and shopping through the afternoon. The real crush is 6 AM to noon, and by going to mid-morning brunch at a diner before heading to the shops we got some good deals without so much of a crush of people. By 3PM, foot traffic was usually similar to a typical Saturday.