Montpelier is in the beginning stages of a social and economic shift, and the city will have to make some significant changes if it wants to take advantage of emerging opportunities and avoid being left in the dust.

The evidence is outlined in a pair of recent stories by Phil Dodd in The Bridge, the city’s twice-monthly free newspaper. The first, published in mid-April, recounts the struggles of downtown merchants due to a dramatic drop in foot traffic. The second, posted on May 7, describes a “weak” market for downtown office space.

The root cause is a significant increase in remote working, first triggered by the Covid pandemic and intensified by last summer’s flooding — and likely to be exacerbated by the ongoing buildout of high-speed Internet. One example: The Vermont League of Cities and Towns, which has sublet part of its City Center offices because almost all of its 50 employees now work remotely. Right there, that’s 40 or more people no longer spending weekdays downtown, getting coffee, eating lunch, and running errands.

The big enchilada, as always, is the State of Vermont. Dodd doesn’t cite numbers, but it appears that a large percentage of state workers are now working from home. I can tell you anecdotally that it’s a whole lot easier to park near the Statehouse than it was before Covid.

Historically, downtown Montpelier has thrived on the foot traffic generated by all those office workers. Now it’s going to have to reinvent itself. My suggestion: Cut down on parking and build more housing. Lots more housing. Turn Montpelier into a living space. It’s a natural, thanks to its small footprint and the presence of key merchants like Shaw’s and Aubuchon Hardware. Easily navigable on foot or by bike or mobility device.

Coincidentally, I just read Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar. It had a big impact on how I view the health of cities large and small. Here’s some of what I learned.

Cities and towns devote huge amounts of real estate to parking. If you look at an aerial photo or planning map of any community, you’ll see just how much space is devoted to cars, not people. In the heart of downtown Montpelier, which doesn’t seem all that car-centric, parking lots take up roughly half the space. It’s more than half if you include street parking.

That doesn’t include all the huge lots west of downtown owned by the state of Vermont. Include those, and a significant majority of Montpelier’s space is devoted to cars. On any given day, especially now, most of that space goes unused. If current trends in working hold true, that space will never be needed again.

City planning in North America is oriented, first and foremost, to cars, not people. Parking requirements are based on maximum potential use. Most communities require so much parking that some kinds of development (especially denser forms of housing) become impracticable. (The city of Burlington recently eliminated parking minimums, and bully for them.) Shopping malls aim to provide enough parking for absolute peak times, like Black Friday and the days before Christmas. The rest of the year, it’s wasted space.

The popular conception is that freeways destroyed our cities. Truth is, a parking-first orientation has been even more devastating. Cities and towns have set aside vast tracts of real estate in pursuit of “enough parking,” which is defined as the availability of parking spots whenever and wherever someone might want to go.

I’ll admit I’m a prisoner of this mindset. When I drive to Montpelier or Barre, I’m disappointed if I can’t park within a half-block of my destination. When I go to Burlington or to my old haunts in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I expect less convenience but I still want to be there. When I go to Montréal, I expect to drydock my car and use mass transit. We recently went to New York City; we drove to Hudson, New York and took Amtrak (a train every two hours or so) to Penn Station.

Finally, there is no such thing as “enough parking.” If you have a thriving community, parking will always be in demand. If you’ve got a slumping downtown, more parking is not the answer. Most crucially, there is no sweet spot. If you try to provide “enough parking,” then you’re deliberately nuking your own community.

The most successful cities I’ve ever visited have chronic parking shortages and traffic congestion. New York, Toronto, Montréal, Paris, London, Dublin. If a city is desirable, people will want to be there. If a city is full of vacant lots and parking is plentiful, there isn’t enough space left for the businesses reuired to make a downtown vibrant.

Montpelier has always enjoyed a third way, thanks to large quantities of commuting workers. If many of those commuters are never coming back, Montpelier will have to find another way forward.

Dodd’s second article points out the difficulties of converting office space to housing. It’s a sobering review. But the city will have to find solutions for those problems. I don’t know if it’s zoning, tax abatements, incentives, public investment, or (most likely) all of the above. The city will also have to make room for new housing construction. It should take a lesson from the city of Barre — not a sentence that’s been uttered very often — which recently agreed to sell two surface lots for $1 apiece in hopes that new housing will be built there.

This will require a new mindset, oriented more toward people, not cars. We have to give up our hard-wired view that parking is paramount for a healthy community. It is, on balance, a detriment. A bug, not a feature. City residents will also have to make room in their mental maps for more housing, even if it has some impact on the “character” of the community. If the state sees a permanent reduction in office occupancy, then it should relinquish some of its vast parking inventory and allow new housing to be built.

Just as a back-of-the-envelope example, look at the grassy hillside on the far left of the photo above. Why not eliminate the last row of parking on the left and build an elevated row of apartments, at least two stories high, with limited resident parking beneath? The state would lose maybe a dozen spaces at most. Some residents wouldn’t have on-site parking; they’d either have to be willing to live car-free or settle for parking elsewhere in town. For many, that’s perfectly acceptable.

Maybe that wouldn’t work. I’m not a developer, I’m just a writer. But it’s the kind of creative thinking that’s required, a housing-first orientation for public policy, and a new vision for a Montpelier made healthy and vibrant by the presence of people — lots of people — for whom downtown is their neighborhood.