Parking Madness: Los Angeles vs. Dallas

Streetsblog’s own “Sweet 16” of the worst downtown parking craters in America — Parking Madness! — continues today with two cities that grew up in the auto age.

Known for their mega-highways and congestion, Los Angeles and Dallas have the parking scars to go along with all those cars.

An anonymous commenter submitted this entry, calling it “the vast expanse of nothing in-between the Civic Center and Bunker Hill in downtown L.A.”

The Civic Center area is home to Los Angeles’s city, state, and federal government buildings.

Streetsblog LA editor Damien Newton filled in some background on this eyesore:

Located a mere two blocks from City Hall, and basically adjacent to the busy “Civic Center” subway station, this particular lot is a true abomination on the L.A. landscape. While some sanity is coming to Los Angeles’s parking policy, the city has a long way to go. Consider this image, put together by Gehl architects, showing a shocking 545 acres of parking lots within 1 km of the Figueroa Corridor connecting Downtown Los Angeles with South Los Angeles.

The competition, submitted by Streetsblog Network member Systemic Failure, is this depression in Dallas:

A new building — the Perot Museum of Science and History — has actually sprouted up in this parking crater, but it might not actually be much of an improvement to the public realm. James Howard Kunstler singled this area out in his ongoing “Eyesore of the Month” feature, calling it “a wilderness of surface parking, freeway ramps, and pointless ambiguous ‘green spaces.'” The Perot Museum, designed by starchitect Thom Mayne, was no doubt meant to demonstrate Dallas’s civic might.

Winner: Dallas!

Last week, Tulsa triumphed over Philadelphia (which was also disqualified for technical reasons), and Milwaukee mopped the floor with Jersey City.

While the NCAA tournament takes a breather, the action never stops on Streetsblog. Tomorrow’s match-up: Louisville vs. San Diego.