Parking Lots
Large, expansive parking lots as seen in these photos show a different parking world in D.C. than residents see today, and that is especially true in the downtown area near the National Mall and Capitol Hill. As the city encouraged people to use more sustainable forms of transportation like Metro or Capital Bikeshare or city buses, the landscape of the city changed.
As automobile use increased in American cities, concern over the appearance of parking lots in D.C. increased. A study was prepared for the Commission of Fine Arts in 1966, discussing the problem. According to the study, "large open parking lots create unsightly views from taller buildings" and "parking between buildings and at intersections create breaks in continuity and scale in the commercial and residential areas."
One major suggestion to this problem was to plant trees in parking lots to "provide shade and to reduce the expanse of the open area."