There’s a story in this week’s Gazette about an infill proposal on the edge of downtown Gaithersburg. The developer is asking for a parking reduction from the city’s required minimums, because the site is within walking distance of a whole host of amenities and transit, and because the target demographic is young professionals interested in urban living.

The City Council’s response? To paraphrase Councilwoman Cathy Drzyzgula, “There is no evidence that Gaithersburg will not still be a car-driven community far into the future.”

With all due respect, Ms. Drzyzgula, this is why we plan. Gaithersburg can be whatever you want it to be, with the right set of regulations. If you continue to enact regulations that require developers to focus their buildings around cars (such as requirements for lots of parking), then your community will be a car-driven one forever. On the other hand, if you enact regulations that favor walking, then over time you’ll see a critical mass of walkable development and before too long your community will be a walkable one. These things don’t happen by accident; they happen by plan, according to the laws you as a community leader enact.

The really unfortunate thing here is that Gaithersburg has lost so much ground. It wasn’t that long ago that the Gaithersburg City Council was one of the more progressive in the country. Back in the 1990s it was developers asking to build car-centric suburbia and the Council pointing them towards more responsible forms. Thanks to the leadership of the Council then, Gaithersburg was transitioning quickly away from the cars-all-the-time model. Now, because the Council doesn’t seem to understand the value of planning, they continue to legally mandate congestion by requiring unnecessary parking and maintaining other regulations that subsidize driving and discourage anything else.

This is exactly what I was talking about two days ago. Americans don’t drive all the time by accident; they do so because we require them to with ridiculous laws that mandate driving be the dominant mode. It’s completely preposterous. The Gaithersburg City Council, which went through this whole debate years ago, should know better.

Update 8/28: Some of the characterizations in this post are inaccurate. Please see Three cheers for responsive government for more.