Cities are constantly faced with tough decisions, and few spark as much debate as parking. It makes sense. People want easy access.

But when every conversation about downtown improvements gets derailed by where people are going to park, we lose sight of the bigger picture. The issue has become a flashpoint in Portland around the development of a proposed new music venue on Congress Street near City Hall.

The site for the music hall is an old warehouse and parking lot — underutilized and providing only limited value in its current form to the city and the people who live and visit. Opponents of the project are using a lack of parking as a reason as one of their rallying cries, despite the fact that the city’s own research demonstrates that there is ample available parking in the evenings within a short walk of the location.

For more than a decade, Portland’s city council and planning board have worked to delink required parking from new construction, rightly realizing the vitality comes from people, not cars. It would be a mistake for the city to undo this progress. The truth is, the more we design our cities around cars, the less we offer to the people who actually live, work and spend time in them.

Prioritizing parking means something else has to give: beauty, walkability, public space, the kind of street life that actually draws people in. And once it’s gone, it’s hard to get back.

The proposed Portland Music Hall would bring more people downtown, and planning board requirements call for improvements to sidewalks, intersections and crossings to ensure that pedestrians have safe access. Existing zoning rules also require new buildings to fit into and enhance the places where they are constructed.

Great cities are built for people, not machines. Nobody visits a place because it has great parking. They go for the architecture, the energy, the experience. They go to be around other people, to take in a place that feels alive. That doesn’t happen in a sea of asphalt.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that parking is holding your downtown back. But adding more of it has never been the spark that turns a place around. You won’t find a single city that revitalized because it put in a bigger lot.

What you do see, over and over, is that once you make a place worth visiting, once there’s something people actually want to experience, they figure out how to get there. They walk a few blocks. They take a shuttle. They circle the block until they find a spot. Because it’s worth it.

The cities that thrive understand this. They raise the bar. They protect their built environment. They invest in public spaces. They make sure the streets feel good to walk. And most importantly, they design places people want to be, not just drive through.

Yes, parking matters. But it’s not the most important thing. Not even close. Every space you dedicate to car storage is space you’re not using to make your city more welcoming, more beautiful or more connected.

So, if Portland is wrestling with a decision about parking right now, ask the bigger question: Are we planning for convenience, or are we building a place people actually want to stay in?

Because when you get the place right, when it’s attractive, walkable and full of life, people don’t complain about parking. They just show up.