Thread by @jbouie

i really love this letter in support of the (wasteful, needless) proposed new parking garage, because it demonstrates everything wrong with how some influential stakeholders think of downtown charlottesville

first of all, the premise of the letter — that downtown faces a severe parking shortage that precludes visitors from experiencing the area — is demonstrably false. downtown charlottesville has two parking garages — which are rarely at capacity — & an abundance of surface parking.

in fact, the city hired consultants to do a study of downtown parking in 2015 which concluded that the parking problem was more management than supply, and urged city leaders to refrain from building new parking in favor of better management of existing resources.

it should also be said that the claims about tourism assume their own conclusion, which is that the construction of new parking will provide more business, when there’s no evidence that is true.

also, it makes no sense to say that downtown is currently a major attraction (under conditions of “not enough parking”) but that it will wither on the vine unless we construct a new garage, which would imply the opposite.

anyway the biggest problem with this letter, as i said at the top, is it envisions downtown primarily as a tourist attraction. you come and eat, maybe see a show. it is a vision of downtown that is completely uninterested in what the space could be for people who live here.

it is a cramped vision that reflects the extremely parochial concerns of a narrow group of property owners.

city council will be discussing the garage this afternoon, and i hope its members see that the money spent on a garage might be better spent bringing loads of housing to downtown, making it a truly vibrant part of the city, rather than an “attraction”