Albuquerque was one of the saddest downtowns I’ve ever been to. We went for a couple of nights on a long trip just to see NM, stayed downtown. The entire city was empty, massive swaths of empty parking lots with the occasional few shops in between. That city honestly has a very unique culture, green chiles in everything, and has so much potential, but the city is just rotting from car culture.

It just kills me how parking laws and car-minded people think about downtowns. “There is too much traffic, so we must add parking”, which was a very naive idea because they ended up bulldozing all of the reasons there was traffic in the first place. Now tax revenue from downtown cores is minimal, downtowns deteriate, but hey you can go park there whenever you want. Just don’t expect anything to do once you are there.