Parking Madness: St. Louis vs. Kansas City

It’s an intra-Missouri battle today in the fourth match-up of Parking Madness, Streetsblog’s annual hunt for the worst parking craters in North America.

Which rival will advance to the round of eight — and a chance at the coveted “Golden Crater” — Kansas City or St. Louis?

First up, the city they call KCMO:

The red outlines denote Kansas City’s moonscape of parking craters. Submitter Emily Katherine says it’s even worse: Many of the buildings between surface parking lots are parking garages. Which begs the question, where on earth are all these car owners headed? From the looks of things there just aren’t that many places left to go.

Onward to St. Louis:

Alex Ihnen at NextSTL sends us this beauty. He notes that this is a publicly subsidized parking crater — as God and nature intended — which is “bookended by two parking garages.” This is the area St. Louis calls Ballpark Village, and it was supposed to be the site of a mixed-use development not long ago. Now the developer says the market won’t bear it and all taxpayers have to show for their investment is this embarrassment, jokingly dubbed “Carpark Village.”

Which is worse, readers? Collect yourselves and weigh in below.