“Elite Eight” Parking Madness: Tulsa vs. Cleveland

This is it: our last Parking Madness match-up before the Final Four. And it’s going to be a good one.

From the beginning, the two cities facing off today — Cleveland, Ohio, and Tulsa, Oklahoma — both seemed to me like solid contenders to make the final rounds.

Without further ado, let’s examine Tulsa:

This photo came from Stephen Lassiter of Bike Walk Tulsa, who told us that “the southern half of downtown is almost entirely surface parking.”

Pull back the lens and you can see what he’s talking about:

Not pretty! The good news is, Tulsa recently issued a moratorium on downtown surface parking lots. So there’s that.

Now, let’s see how Cleveland stacks up.

This animated gif shows Cleveland’s Warehouse District in the 1970s — when it really was warehouses — versus today, now home to apartments, dance clubs, and restaurants. The images were first published on my urbanism blog Rust Wire and assembled this handy way by an anonymous internet do-gooder.

Panning out, you can see the Warehouse District parking voids in context:

That second picture really shows how disruptive this crater is to the urban fabric.

Let us know which one you judge to be more terrible. The winner will join Dallas, Houston and Milwaukee in the Final Four.

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