Mayor wants to expand his 'urban village' utopia

In this article in the P-I, we find that the Mayor of Seattle, Greg Nichols, is trying to expand his utopian 'urban village' concept by forcing more of us out of our cars, by allowing developers to build fewer parking spaces for new developements in areas (Capitol Hill, First Hill) that already have parking problems.

I live in the lower Queen Anne area, and parking here is tight, but not as ridiculously tight as in the above mentioned neighborhoods - at least not yet, anyway - but I have already seen the Mayors hand in the parking situation here, as over the past few years, a lot of condo's, apartments, and even some new hotels have been built here with few parking spaces built for those new developments - as a matter of fact, a lot of what were once "non-time-limited" (you can park for up to 72 consecutive hours in those) spaces either have meters (15 minutes max!) now, or are simply just gone - without any regard whatsoever for the already established residents of the neighborhood. I know I'm not happy about this, and most of my neighbors aren't either, but does the Mayor care how we feel? Not a Tinkers ... um, 'whit'.

The Mayors idea is to cram as many people and businesses as possible, into the smallest area possible, thereby creating 'urban villages' where people will live, work, and shop, all in their neighborhood, reducing (with the one day hope of eliminating) the need for cars, reducing pollution and bad traffic. Sounds pretty good, right?

Well, the whole idea is flawed from the get go, as most people do not work in the same area that they live, and I really don't know of too many business owners that will move their business to a "central location" to accomodate their employees, let alone the Mayor and his idiotic 'urban village' idea. Oh, and by the way, the Mayor isn't giving anyone (other than developers) any incentive to buy into his wonder-plan. If you live in one of the impacted areas, and need to own a car, and complain about the lack of parking, the Mayor's attitude is, basically, 'So what? Sell your car, take the bus, or sign up with FlexCar. Not my problem!' (he doesn't live there, you see, and rarely gets out of his office to visit neighborhoods).

See? Flawed. Will things change? Only when we unelect the 'Urban Village Idiot'.