We Unpaved Paradise and Tore Down a Parking Lot

While we’re talking about infrastructural evolution, here’s something I stumbled across the other day.

Here’s a 2010 aerial view of the Coles Building, current seat of the Legislative Assembly of PEI:

Detail from 2010 high resolution orthophoto of Charlottetown downtown area
Dept. of Environment, Water and Climate Change
Forests, Fish & Wildlife Division

If you’ve visited the Coles Building, you’ll remember that the front yard is a lovely greenspace, with a canopy of mature trees; an excellent place to seek shelter from the hot summer.

Only 42 years earlier, however, when the 1968 aerial survey was done, this same area was home to parking spaces for 39 vehicles:

Detail from 1968 high resolution orthophoto of Charlottetown downtown area
Dept. of Environment, Water and Climate Change
Forests, Fish & Wildlife Division

Visiting the area today there is no hint whatsoever of the former design; it is a landscape transformed.

So we are capable of making positive changes that increase our quality of life and decrease (or, given the construction of parkades nearby in ensuing years, at least consolidate) parking.