Downtown Parking Lot Maps - Page 6

eburress · #**101** Posted **Jun 7, 2011, 9:05 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lipani

Thank you for covering San Diego, eburress. While the Marina is in relatively good shape, hopefully the next building boom will spread to the other areas. The City College is filling up some blocks nearby; the North Embarcadero plan should be (or is?) starting soon; and once the Nimbys lose lawsuit#34,467 the Navy Broadway Complex will be a nice addition to the waterfront. If the Chargers get a stadium built downtown that might kick off some much-needed gentrification nearby. North of Broadway, being further away from the downtown's main attractions (Petco Park, Gaslamp, Convention Center, etc.), will probably take longer to develop.

Exactly. With the Chargers Stadium, Lane Field, the NBC complex, and the North Embarcadero plan, the vast majority of those big lots near the bay won't be there for long. And I think you're right about the next building boom - it's likely to gobble up a big chunk of those other spots.

Nouvellecosse · #**102** Posted **Jun 7, 2011, 10:05 PM**

So... how about Chicago?

It seems to be the largest city north of Mexico not illustrated at this point.

photoLith · #**103** Posted **Jun 7, 2011, 10:13 PM**

Chicago has tons and tons of parking lots just west of downtown and south. I'll do that one later but it will take a while.

pico44 · #**104** Posted **Jun 7, 2011, 10:50 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Here you go. I took a shot at midtown Manhattan.

I couldn't find any in the central core or along the East River, but the Jersey-facing shore is littered with them. Interestingly, about half appear to be reserved for buses only (shown in yellow).

Epic. Especially considering the fact that there is incredible density both above and below that frame.

MonkeyRonin · #**105** Posted **Jun 7, 2011, 11:35 PM**

Lower Manhattan:

J. Will · #**106** Posted **Jun 7, 2011, 11:37 PM**

In downtown Manhattan, the largest concentration of parking lots is probably near the entrance to the Williamsburg bridge. There are entire city blocks of parking lots:

photoLith · #**107** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 12:34 AM**

^
I wish Houston was only that lucky to have only a few smatterings of parking lots like that. Now NYC just has to take care of all those terrible public housing projects on the east side of manhattan.

AusHou · #**108** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 2:47 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by photolitherland

^
I wish Houston was only that lucky to have only a few smatterings of parking lots like that. Now NYC just has to take care of all those terrible public housing projects on the east side of manhattan.

Dang, what's with all the negative stuff in your posts? It seems a little out of control lately.

sbarn · #**109** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 5:22 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by J. Will

In downtown Manhattan, the largest concentration of parking lots is probably near the entrance to the Williamsburg bridge. There are entire city blocks of parking lots:

All that property is owned by the City and currently moving toward redevelopment. It actually has a long (and troubled) history of "slum clearance", and several failed redevelopment attempts. Hopefully the current iteration will move forward.

You can read more about it HERE.

dave8721 · #**110** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 1:41 PM**

I tried to do Miami but I couldn't fit any decent portion of downtown into one picture at a good zoom level due to its weird geography (5 or so blocks wide, 25 to 40 blocks long). In order to get a good north-south extent, I had to inlude big areas of decidedly non-downtown areas to the west.

Nowhereman1280 · #**111** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 2:22 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by photolitherland

Chicago has tons and tons of parking lots just west of downtown and south. I'll do that one later but it will take a while.

Yes, but the loop is nearly devoid of them now, it would be interesting to do a before and after the boom parking lots map.

BG918 · #**112** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 2:40 PM**

The problem that many cities experienced in the 60's and 70's, especially oil boom towns like Tulsa, Denver, Houston and Dallas, was that shorter buildings came down to make way for 50 story towers. These towers required a lot of parking in cities where most people drove to their jobs downtown. The vacant and crumbling 1 and 2 story commercial buildings that used to line streets outside of the core came down for surface parking lots.

In the case of Tulsa, the trio of Denver, Dallas, and Houston were much bigger and grew faster in the 80's and 90's and many of the lots saw infill, especially in areas like Uptown Dallas and Lodo in Denver. Tulsa didn't see the same type of boom and only recently have surface lots started being redeveloped as indicated in Artist's post.

Another big impact to Tulsa was that two higher education institutions, OSU-Tulsa and Tulsa Community College, are big landowners at the north and south ends of downtown. They also have huge surface lots that their students/faculty use and that will be developed, albeit slowly. Similar to Austin's situation where the state government has stranglehold on the lots and garages by the capitol and will develop them at their own slow pace.

CALMSP · #**113** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 3:10 PM**

wow - that Houston pic looks terrible!! Glad I wasn't even alive to witness that!! And this is the first time I have even seen a pic of downtown without the convention center.............hard to believe!

shane453 · #**114** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 3:11 PM**

I did this for central Oklahoma City about a year ago. Green are vacant lots/brownfields and red are surface parking lots. We have a very dense CBD with no surface parking (leftish bottom center) surrounded by some serious urban renewal casualties. As with many other cities in the thread, a lot of the parking and lots are already being converted to mostly apartments and hotels, particularly the area just northeast of the CBD (Deep Deuce neighborhood) which now is almost empty of surface parking.

I think it is encouraging the rate that parking lots are being seen as opportunity sites, and in the long run all these empty lots could be to the advantage of sunbelt cities trying to recover from sprawl.

brickell · #**115** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 3:54 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by dave8721

I tried to do Miami but I couldn't fit any decent portion of downtown into one picture at a good zoom level due to its weird geography (5 or so blocks wide, 25 to 40 blocks long). In order to get a good north-south extent, I had to include big areas of decidedly non-downtown areas to the west.

I tried it too and ran into the same problem. Mine wasn't an apples to apples comparison either, I was including vacant and unbuilt lots, so I abandoned it. Needless to say, there's quite a bit of parking in Miami. The worst part about it is the amount of surface lots adjacent to metrorail and metromover stations. It's pathetic, that more of that wasn't built up during the last boom.

brantw · #**116** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 4:33 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by eburress

Exactly. With the Chargers Stadium, Lane Field, the NBC complex, and the North Embarcadero plan, the vast majority of those big lots near the bay won't be there for long. And I think you're right about the next building boom - it's likely to gobble up a big chunk of those other spots.

The San Diego map is kinda embarrassing, right now.

BG918 · #**117** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 6:04 PM**

Someone really should update these maps in 10 years to see how much things have changed. I think our cities were beginning to move in a really positive direction until the recession slowed things down, but I anticipate it will get going again soon.

A really cool piece would be aerial photos of cities with parking highlighted from 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020 & 2030. A period of 50 years, and how cities have reverted back to what they were 50+ years ago today.

emathias · #**118** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 6:39 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by alps

Here's the bulk of the empty lots in the centre of Halifax:

Green - announced projects - with any luck, to be developed soon
Blue - unsure/rumours
Red - nothing announced to my knowledge, or functioning parking lots associated with hotels, hospitals, groceries, etc.

It's good to see that some cities still have defensible forts. All these new open-plan cities are just ripe for a Mogol Horde to come in.

10023 · #**119** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 6:58 PM**

On the Manhattan maps - one of the biggest red parking lots in the Midtown pic along 11th Ave is now a condo tower, I think, and the new Gehry tower downtown is also marked as being a parking lot.

In fact I bet that a number of those parking lots are now condo towers given the amount of construction in West Midtown and Downtown over the past few years.

mhays · #**120** Posted **Jun 8, 2011, 7:02 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by BG918

Someone really should update these maps in 10 years to see how much things have changed. I think our cities were beginning to move in a really positive direction until the recession slowed things down, but I anticipate it will get going again soon.

A really cool piece would be aerial photos of cities with parking highlighted from 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020 & 2030. A period of 50 years, and how cities have reverted back to what they were 50+ years ago today.

I'd say most US downtowns moved in a VERY positive direction at least in the last 10 years, and in many cases in the past 30 years. I can't think of a major center that didn't have a residential influx in the last decade.

Apartment construction is already starting up again in some cities.