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boulevardofdef t1_jcaii62 wrote

Reply to comment by Parlor-soldier in Yoleni’s in Downtown Providence has closed by lovecraft_401

I once saw someone say, LONG before Covid, that Providence is a perfect example of how a city can do everything right and still not attract people downtown.

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huron9000 t1_jcc3sk0 wrote

Except it’s definitely not doing everything right. Taxes and rents are both really high, and doing business with the city is a nightmare. The city government really doesn’t seem to care if businesses succeed or fail.

Let’s take the strategy of making downtown more pedestrian-friendly by, in part, intentionally making it more difficult to drive in, or into, or park, in the city.

Ie, “Let’s make it harder to drive, and nearly impossible to park for free, and people will switch to walking, bikes, and scooters!”

What keeps getting lost over and over in this conversation is the fact that the viability of Downtown Providence depends on the participation of many people who live in the greater Providence area, but not in the city itself. aka ‘Greater Providence’.

In the 80s and 90s and aughts, it was very common for people from the surrounding suburbs and exurbs to come into downtown Providence for a night of fun.

But due to a bunch of shitty trends, including political polarization, inadequate policing, and false news, that seems to be much less the case today.

You can only tell suburbanites and their cars to fuck off for so long before a lot of them start listening.

Combine these factors with the hollowing out of office jobs due to work from home, and the Providence renaissance might be in danger of truly stalling out.

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lightningbolt1987 t1_jcevdy7 wrote

Give me a break—how on earth is providence saying fuck off to drivers? There are many parking lots and parking garages downtown, there’s virtually never traffic downtown. Personally, I’ve never had to pay for parking downtown. The longest I’ve ever had to circulate to find street parking is 20 minutes at the absolute worst and that’s because I refused to pay for a parking lot. It’s right off of multiple highways. There are only a couple bike lanes in the entire downtown on the quiet Empire and Fountain Streets. The whole downtown revolves around drivers.

The key to success in downtown Providence is much more housing. Full stop. You can’t have a successful downtown that completely revolves around people driving in from other places, which is still pretty much the case here—you can’t even get there that easily from the adjacent neighborhoods (west side, smith hill) without driving! There needs to be lots of people there 24/7, using the local shops as their primary liquor store/market/bookstore, having Burnside Park be their primary green space (lots of city parks of homelessness challenges, but they usually they have a lot of non-homeless people to balance it out—there just aren’t enough people living downtown to do this at burnside which is why it feels as it does. Housing at Superman will help). More people living downtown means it feels more vibrant all the time which also makes it more attractive to people who visit from other places.

The best way to draw people from outside of providence is to have downtown providence be awesome and worth coming to. That requires a big 24/7 population to create an around-the-clock pulse to the place. Otherwise, the bones are already great: great architecture, riverfront access, a good foundation of shops and restaurants, train access, etc. We now just need people.

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huron9000 t1_jchh59e wrote

They have been saying fuck off to drivers by steadily eliminating free on-street parking for years now. It’s been a clearly visible erosion.

Perhaps this is due to the political influence of powerful parking lot owners.

Every successful downtown in history has relied upon people coming in from other places to spend money there.

Yes- more housing downtown will help; but that’s not a complete solution. Downtown Providence was vibrant in the past because it drew workers each weekday that didn’t live there:

Office workers. They worked in banks, investment companies, insurance agencies, accounting firms, any number of endeavors, but they came to work in an office in Providence, even though they didn’t live in the city.

This is what a metropolitan capital looks like. Lively, alive. Crowded. Bankers, brokers, actors, paralegals, office managers, bartenders, interns, administrators, students, retirees, all in the mix, getting lunch.

That was back in the day, 15 or 20 years ago, when Providence had a functioning financial district and a vibrant downtown.

Now it’s just students and retirees, if you’re lucky.

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lightningbolt1987 t1_jchzq3o wrote

First off: are you really so cheap that you can’t spend $4 on a parking meter? The meters don’t exist to screw over drivers, they’re there to help businesses—they don’t want people to just park all day while they go and do other things, they want the street spots to be for visitors and store patrons. No one is avoiding downtown because of meters, that’s ridiculous. Any serious urban main street has meters.

Secondly, you’re right that more workers would also help the cause but that’s not going to happen. Even before the pandemic, the trend was moving away from old school financial districts. Businesses were just as happy being in lofts in Valley as they are being downtown. Also, finance jobs generally have been declining for years, even in Boston. Work from home exacerbated the problem.

These days, more housing means more workers Most professionals work from home 2-3 days a week. So if they live downtown that means they’re going out to lunch and shopping just like office workers used to, but unlike office workers they’re also around on nights and weekends. The line between home and work is blurred so we need more homes downtown.

Finally: of course, luring people from the burbs is an important part of the equation, but that happens by being a great place. If it’s worth coming to, people from the burbs will come to Providence, even if it means paying for parking. For it to be worthwhile, however, it needs to be vibrant and walkable and fun. It doesn’t matter if parking is easy if it’s not a place where people want to go. In fact, parking is ONLY easy in places where people don’t want to be. If a place is successful then it’s inherently difficult to park because a lot of people want to be there and will be fighting for parking.

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revertothemiddle t1_jcdab19 wrote

Interesting take, though you're probably not going to get many upvotes. I live 30 minutes away and don't go anymore for basically these reasons. But that's a sampling of one!

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huron9000 t1_jcdfy4l wrote

Thanks for weighing in. I know what you mean.

It’s an extremely unfashionable take: the regional approach- which sees Providence as a node -the central node- in a net of settlements that wrap around Narragansett Bay, a spread-out populace that has a place to come together, specifically Providence, specifically downtown.

Vs. the current medieval-revival orthodoxy that trims Providence’s metropolitan ambitions down to a more insular vibe, where downtown is for Providence residents who live within walking, biking, or scooting distance. (RiPTA, let’s be honest, is not used routinely by those with any other practical options.)

I’m not here for upvotes.

Reddit seems like it sometimes can appreciate actual conversation. I know I’ve benefited from reading different takes on issues on forums like this.

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grapefruit_witchh t1_jcz8vqj wrote

Seriously? Your answer is to put more parking garages and car spaces in downtown? Make it even less walkable and more dangerous for pedestrians?

That worked out really well for downtown Houston

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