Parking Madness Final Four: Kansas City vs. Rochester

The hunt for the worst parking crater on earth nears its epic conclusion with the second Final Four match of Parking Madness.

Today’s matchup features a formidable entry from Kansas City and the upstart parking crater from Rochester, New York, which knocked out Detroit in the previous round. The winner will take on Jacksonville tomorrow for a shot at the Golden Crater and eternal parking crater disgrace (but a great local advocacy opportunity).

Which city has made a greater mess of its downtown with excess surface parking?

First up, Kansas City:

This image was marked up and submitted by local advocate Emily Catherine. The area isn’t so much a solitary crater as a pockmarked asphalt wilderness.

They call this the city’s Financial District, but it’s hard to pick out any distinguishing characteristics. That’s the thing about parking craters — after a while all these places start to look the same.

Now on to Rochester, the Cinderella of the 2014 Parking Madness bracket.

Like Kansas City, Rochester has too many surface parking lots and too few buildings between them. It wasn’t always this way. Submitter Matthew Denker points out what was lost when this part of Rochester got leveled by highways and parking lots:

The area called Franklin Square on the old map was once Rochester’s central square, where the community gathered every year to raise a Christmas tree. Now that land is next to the Inner Loop highway and a whole lot of parking. Hard to imagine that any celebrations still take place here.

Let us know which of these craters you think is championship material below.