Sorry I missed posting last week’s Weekly Carnage everyone. I was out of town, um, visiting the strip mall in the photo above.

Every time I leave the city I end up in a place like this: A sea of unused parking spaces in front of a strip mall accessible only by the car with no housing anywhere in site.  When environmentalists talk about the problems caused by an overabundance of impermeable surfaces that collect and taint rainwater, this is the type of place they’re talking about.  When Donald Shoup writes about the need for zoning reform to stop minimum parking requirements based on arbitrary numbers, or Jane Holtz Kay complains about planning parking requirements based on Christmas Eve demand levels, this is the type of place they have in mind.

One or two of these places would be bad enough. But they are everywhere. So here’s a contest: Can you name the city or town where this photo was taken? The person who guesses the closest gets a special prize, courtesy of Streetsblog. I bet nobody is even going to be close because of this one fact: All these places look identical.