Its all nice and good to point out the problem that parking causes in terms of the development or destruction of any downtown, however unless the lack of parking is compensated for by having an excellent public transit system (like Portland) simply removing parking or not starting to address the issue is a recipe for disaster.

Take Los Angeles for example, there are way too many parking structures and lots all over downtown. Unfortunately there isn't really a way to get into downtown unless you are withing 5 miles of it. And you don't really want to live in that area. Even the SF Bay area for that matter, yes there is BART and Muni, but unless you live in the city (for the most part) BART is quite useless if your area of interest is more than a mile outside the sliver that BART services (ignoring all the other problems BART has), and Muni is a joke during rush hour, not to mention the combination of BART + Muni + anything else that you use gets to be pretty pricey.

Unless the issues of public transit are addressed properly, nothing will fix the parking problem or the congestion problem or the gas usage problem or the pollution problem to mention a few.