It’s not surprising or really even news that these two lots are goin’ asphalt, but their parking lot statuses seem to have become vested over the last few months. Jef cries into the (ever-more-barren) wilderness.
THE HELL!? The Department of Inspections and Standards can just wave a wand and invalidate the Zoning Ordinance. They don’t have to consult DRC or the Planning Department, you know, the people tasked with how the city is built?
Why do we have a Zoning Ordinance and why does it say you cannot build a surface lot on an ‘A’ street if the Department of Inspections and Standards is just going to say, “sure, go ahead?”
Without naming names, let me just suggest that there’s a chance — an outside chance — that the political dynamics at the city and state levels might have shifted enough this fall that it’s worth floating proposals that we’ve presented in the past — like a supplemental tax on surface parking lots.
If I have to hear one more person from the suburbs call Providence a crime-ridden ghetto, I my head will explode. They want hate cities and the people who live in them (racists, cough, cough) and they don’t pay taxes here, but get to control how we live and what we build. An empty lot is better than a parking lot. Build a community garden there in containers. Feed some people.
I hate these stupid parking lots. They’re ugly and don’t serve the people of the city. And how are we going to get people into downtown when we have no downtown? It seems counterintuitive to try to draw people into downcity by destroying it.
To answer a question with a question, is more parking needed? Where did the cars that will be parking in these lots park before?
I think the challenge, from a political perspective, is to persuade the general public — especially taxpaying commuters — how parking lots are a less desirable use of available property than specific uses they may not be interested in.
When I put this issue to my father, who I like to think of as a thoughtful and intelligent person, he asked if there was a need for more parking in the city. I suggested that a ‘need’ would likely exist until at least half the city was paved. In that case, he opined, a parking lot is probably a good use for an open lot.
I found myself flummoxed by that, at the realisation that at least from some perspectives, more parking is better, for its own sake, while a ‘need’ exists. That strikes me as a particularly suburban attitude, but I admit I don’t know how to defend my own view, that it was somehow wrong and bad to replace New Japan with a parking lot.
Given the comparative greater political pull of the landed gentry of our fair state to average urbanites, we’ve got to have a much better case than, this makes us sad.