
Kitchener receives $175k for patio-like permeable parking lot - rocky1138
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/kitchener-permeable-parking-lot-1.3549125
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revelation
_The city is set to receive $175,000 through the FCM 's Green Municipal Fund,
meant to help cities tackle climate change and increase environmental
sustainability._

And they built a parking lot.

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sauronlord
I live across from the nature reserve. The parking lot was already there and
regularly used.

But the irony is great.

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ptaipale
Somehow funny that this needs to be marketed as a climate project. That impact
is probably marginal, and energy/material cost of the surface material - not
covered here - is more important.

Probably it has more positive effect by reducing flooding, which tends to get
worse in built up areas with lots of pavement. When rain and melting snow can
bw absorbed to the ground, flooding risks go down.

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parenthephobia
One effect of climate change is increased flood risk in areas not previously
prone to flooding, which is something that Kitchener has been dealing with for
several years now.

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betaby
There are plenty of parkings / pavements like that in Europe. In fact I was
surprised why pavement in USA/Canada is solid concrete and not those small
pavement bricks.

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stuaxo
The ones we have (in the UK at least) are not usually permeable though.

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betaby
I seen pavement construction from the same type of bricks in Brussels and
Warsaw and there was drainage underneath for sure.

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pj_mukh
""This permeable parking lot will help us understand how effective permeable
pavers are for managing impacts to our water quality," Kitchener Mayor Berry
Vrbanovic said in a press release."

So it seems like a study, but this area is surrounded by (a growing number of)
commercial properties with regular concrete. I wonder how they'd measure the
effect while controlling for this growth.

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bydo
Considering that we've been doing this for decades[1], it's a bit odd to see
this hailed as something new. Though it's nice to see low impact
development[2] get some press.

1:
[http://www.millermicro.com/porpave.html](http://www.millermicro.com/porpave.html)

2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-
impact_development_(U.S._a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-
impact_development_\(U.S._and_Canada\))

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hanniabu
I'm not sure of the cost comparisons but there's permeable concrete as well,
some even let plants grow in them.....or they could have just fine will a
Simone solution such as a gravel lot.

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patrickbolle
woo my city is on HN! this is cool, and like others have said Europe got this
down ages ago

