We’re Looking for the Most Improved Parking Crater!
It’s March, so that means it’s time for our annual March Madness-style tournament comparing some of the most disappointing missed opportunities in urban environments: surface parking lots, or, as we like to call them: parking craters.
This year, the sixth year of the tournament, we want to mix things up a little, put a happy spin on things. This year’s competition will feature former parking craters that are now awesome city spaces.
We’re looking for entries for Most Improved Parking Crater! The above aerial showing downtown Denver in the 1970s vs. today is a great example of the kind of improvements cities can make with the right mix of attention, policy and investment.
Send your entries, including photos and a short description to Angie Schmitt at Streetsblog by merely clicking that link by Monday March 18. Or leave the information in the comments. (But we’ll still need a picture, so email is best.)
I spy downtown Denver and its Skyline Urban Renewal Area . . . but the real question is “much improved” over how long a timeframe? 5 years? 10? 30? 50? In Denver, it was a 30-40 year process.
Easy, Sundance Square – Fort Worth, Texas
https://www.pps.org/projects/from-parking-lot-to-gathering-place-sundance-square-leads-as-a-model-for-programmable-public-space
And there’s still a long, long way to go.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e078d40f94c5de1e280b5ee4351d15d6415041b5dc27b1c80fa3f27cdfcecb2a.jpg
Milwaukee. Work in progress.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8850c7365fbe20dda5406cb48d100ec3f05304dac4dd9ed2a94a3f9d258b7612.png
Downtown DC has pretty much eliminated all of its craters. No good pics, though.
Here is a blog that shows the before and after of the area around Nats Park
http://www.jdland.com/dc/slidepics.cfm
Toronto. It’s not even close. You could pick any of a dozen areas of the downtown, here’s a quick random shot of the area around Front St east of Union Station.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1ddaacd447299bd6b68aef3105be0489b1c0e0269961b456677eb1e85fa5a124.jpg
Another shot of the same general area. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3524abdd1f27a7d87238d9623d89f0d64fb2453797d98e4ee265f3128b17badb.jpg
The remaining parking lots in this photo are already slated for redevelopment. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e7d58fae4f8d6fb21ffb98adeaa1381e276495d36e44d36dab265c52402532b9.jpg