Reasons we deserve extinction, Part 3

I'm both new and old around here. I've lived in this town for 14 of the last 15 years and, remarkably, have only recently discovered that I lived most of those years in the wrong part of town. This city, like so many other North American urban centres of its kind, was built during times when both land and energy were ridiculously cheap, and when, surrounded by lush farmland, it seemed impossible that we would ever be able to outstrip our resources. Our response to that seems to have been, for the most part, to spread our big behinds out over as much land as possible, paving it as we went, and then populating it with agonizingly ugly grey squares of concrete with bright coloured signs outside advertising wares that we don't really need at all. I tell you. There are parts of this city that are so ugly that, when I drive through them (and driving through them is really the only option), I just want to slam down the accelerator and close my eyes (thank goodness for those side-impact airbags).

Now, in some small parts of this city -- such as the one that we've just moved to -- there are some small signs of sanity. Some of the powers that be have realized that the future of this region rests on its ability to attract skilled knowledge workers and that such rare types will only remain in cities that are not boring or deplorably ugly. In response to this progressive bit of thinking, there's a resurgence in the downtown core -- restaurants, cafes, small independent retailers, conversions of old industrial buildings into trendy loft apartments -- good mixed use areas.

There are also some large parking lots fronting on the main downtown thoroughfare. Some of these are fairly new, such as the massive one built by a large insurance company so that its employees could presumably take advantage of their life insurance benefits by driving right up to the front door of their building, shortening their lives by at least a minute for every minute of time saved by not walking. Another parking lot, near my house, is a vestigial lot from what used to be a large-ish downtown shopping mall which, predictably, was a complete disaster from the time that it was built. Now, the city would like to turn this parking lot into a town square to attract markets, buskers, meeters and greeters and perhaps include a fountain or two and a skating rink in the winter. The new plan would see the parking areas reconfigured so that parking would be near the back and sides of the area fronting the main street. At a recent council meeting, a group of downtown retailers raised sufficient ruckus over this to postpone a decision on the square for at least six months. Their argument? That patrons who had to walk an extra few dozen metres to their store would stop coming, choosing to drive out to the big box store malls where parking is more plentiful. Net loss of downtown parking spaces anticipated to be lost as a result of the town square development? 3. One. Two. Three.