A group of preservationists in Cincinnati are very worried about a precious historic resource disappearing: surface parking lots in the center city.

As you might have guessed from the titles warning about how the 273 parking lots have tragically dwindled to 270, this is satirical, and was actually an April Fool’s joke which Streetsblog recently pointed out.

Some people talk about preserving parking lots and aren’t joking. Sometimes, it’s because they really feel a parking lot is part of history (though it’s still debatable if that’s worth freezing these forever in time). At other times, this is a strategy to stop a new building, not because of history, but because people don’t want the building.

In a place like Cincinnati which is not growing rapidly, preservation is not often blocking housing affordability. There, there are many old and unique buildings which simply need to be preserved. Doing so wouldn’t drive people out of the city; if anything, it’ll make the center city a more desirable place to live.

In DC, there are also such buildings which contribute to making the city better, but for the most part they already are preserved. The day-to-day preservation fights are not about the architectural jewels but about whether historic preservation is also a tool to simply stop neighborhoods from having more new residents.

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Tagged: cincinnati, historic preservation, humor, preservation, video

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.