The differentiation into two categories with two colors add additional information and make it even more interesting without diminishing the actual point of the visualization.
Surface lots are far worse than parking structures. You can put retail at street level with parking structures. You can do a Texas donut, which is still not ideal but is way denser and prettier than surface lots. Surface parking is cheap. That’s the only advantage it has. And when you factor in the opportunity cost of building nothing but parking on prime real estate it’s not actually all that cheap.
Why the highlighting? Is one more terrible than the other? If so, which one?
The point is to illustrate how much of our cities car-centric infrastructure has destroyed.
If that’s the case no red vs purple is needed. People need to learn how to visualise data to make a point
The differentiation into two categories with two colors add additional information and make it even more interesting without diminishing the actual point of the visualization.
Works perfectly well to illustrate how much of the city area* is covered in parking.
There is no red vs purple, but colour vs lack there of.
Surface lots are far worse than parking structures. You can put retail at street level with parking structures. You can do a Texas donut, which is still not ideal but is way denser and prettier than surface lots. Surface parking is cheap. That’s the only advantage it has. And when you factor in the opportunity cost of building nothing but parking on prime real estate it’s not actually all that cheap.
What is a Texas donut
They asked, on the internet, when using a search engine is the same amount of work with no waiting.
https://ericvery.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/the-texas-doughnut/
The Texas Doughnut
Also that one from Quora, which looks different.