Parking Madness 2014: the competition a city doesn’t want to win. This isn’t a study on which metro area has residents who are the worst at parallel parking or backing in — but rather on which city has the greatest share of its landscape eaten up by excess parking lots, as determined in large part by votes of residents themselves.
In 2013, Tulsa earned Streetblog USA’s “Golden Grater” — and in 2014, the designation went to Rochester, NY. But a few Florida cities were big contenders: Miami and Jacksonville, especially.
Miami was noted for its “million dollar parking views, overlooking the Miami River and Biscayne Bay” but was eliminated in the first round by Rochester.
Jacksonville, however, made it all the way to the finals — beating Calgary, Dallas and Chicago (“some of the most hideous parking expanses in the world”) to get there.
Jacksonville’s excess parking areas, from an aerial view, are pretty impressive.
“Drab. Dead. Ugly. Pretty much any adjective that is synonymous with “lifeless” works for this part of Jacksonville,” Streetsblog USA writes on Florida’s northeastern most metropolis. “This one is one of those extra-terrible waterfront parking craters. Carved up by so many freeways, could this ever become a walkable city environment, or is it destined for eternal crater-tude?”
Out of 776 votes cast, however, Jacksonville earned just 20 percent against Rochester.
