Parking Madness: Long Beach vs. Muncie

1:10 PM EDT on March 25, 2016

We're approaching the end of the first round of Parking Madness, and boy, have we seen some catastrophic damage. After today, there are two more parking craters to reveal in this year's bracket.

In our last matchup, parking-cratered downtown Wilkes-Barre bested shopping mall parking lots in the northeast Bronx. Today, a coastal California parking crater goes up against a crater in the heartland.

Long Beach

Here's a sad waterfront parking crater right next the Pacific Ocean. It comes from our friends at Longbeachize. They write that it's "mostly used to host the Grand Prix once a year. What can the other 11.5 months of the year be used for?"

Muncie

The parking lots of downtown Muncie, Indiana, have been conveniently outlined in red by reader Zane Bishop. He writes:

The real tragedy here lies less in the size of individual craters and more so in the overall number and density of parking lots. By my estimate, Downtown Muncie is almost 50% parking. Better yet, nearly all of this parking is reserved for offices, meaning it is only being used 25% of the hours of the year. These lots replaced many historic buildings, which were torn down due to neglect and abandonment after development shifted toward suburban areas.

A sad story, and all too common.

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