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Comment by a2tech | Hacker News Reader

I'm one of those people. I LOVE being able to go anywhere I want, when I want. I'm willing to pay for the privilege. Do you know what happens when you take away parking and make it difficult for me to bring myself (and lets be honest what really matters--my money) to a place? I stop going. If you make it difficult for me to get to where I want to go I read that as a rejection of ME, and I don't go places where I'm not wanted. My money and my car will go somewhere else. I'm not going to fight with people online about it, I'll just abandon those spaces.

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Please don't take it personally. YOU are still welcome. YOU are not a fast-moving, noisy, smelly, ugly, large, heavy metal box.

Other people who also self-identity as ME matter too. THEY will still welcome YOU. absent the brum-brum which, in aggregate with other brum-brums, is a massive annoyance to THEM.

The businesses will still be better off though, because for everyone like you who avoids them due to the lack of parking, there will be multiple people who visit them more on foot or by bike. Your money won’t be missed.

> The businesses will still be better off though

Depends on the downtown area.

If there is enough population living within walking distance of the shops to sustain those shops then the businesses will be fine. And the area will be more pleasant for those who do live within that area, so that's nice. It does become exclusionary for those who live outside the area as parent poster said but perhaps that's ok, as long as the population density there is high enough to keep it going.

But many downtown shop areas don't have enough population within walking distance to keep the businesses viable. Those areas depend on people from farther out driving in to spend their money. For those, making parking difficult (too far, too expensive) can quickly go into a downward spiral of shops closing, area decaying, becoming less attractive to visit, leading to even more shops closing, until the old downtown core is a ghost town.

So population density is key. If density isn't there one can't just slap a prohibition on cars/parking and expect it to work well.

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