Jason McDowell

In Jason McDowells piece "These Buildings were Demolished for Soulless Surface Parking Spaces" is highly opinionated, bitter, and a little agitated. He goes through the streets of Milwaukee, seeing where old buildings were replaced with parking lots. It is almost shocking to see just how many buildings were gone and how many parking lots replaced them instead of a new building or a park. He writes his review of the city in a passionate and energetic way, making his opinion very clear. He does not cut corners by using any flowery words or justifying these parking lots in anyway, instead he points out that there is no lack of parking in Milwaukee, but instead an excess of free spaces that are used for litter to collect. He states "it removes the three-dimensional history and replaces it with a flat surface that can only hold two states: empty or littered". While I agree that these excess spaces can be a sore on the eye of Milwaukee, and they do in a way encourage more people driving individually rather than using public transit, they are still necessary because of how many events are held in Milwaukee, though I'm not sure that Milwaukee needs over 100 parking lots. The old cream city brick buildings will always be much more beautiful, interesting, and charismatic than a littered parking lot. 

Compared to other articles from OnMilwaukee, this seems a bit more cynical and disgruntled than others, which is not a bad thing. It is important to bring attention to the not so fun parts of Milwaukee and make sure that others are aware of them. McDowell even states that "surface lots form the black holes of a city's soul" which is not untrue, but still a very firm negative stance on a parking space that many other people don't think twice about. But that is the whole point of the article, to bring light to something that is never talked about.

Article Referenced:
https://onmilwaukee.com/articles/buildings-demolished-for-parking-lots