If I asked you what the biggest problem is in our downtown, I can imagine for most of you, a certain word would come to mind: parking.

In the downtown world, parking has earned its reputation as the off-limits “p-word,” a problem that every downtown has but no solution ever fully truly fixes. In downtowns, all of which were designed and constructed before the automobile was a mainstay in American life, management of automobiles — where to put them, how to direct them, and how to limit them — is a problem that is here to stay.

As Charles Marohn, the founder of the nonprofit Strong Towns, writes: “For thousands of years, humans built settlements scaled to people who walked … this changed with the advent of the automobile technology that became ubiquitous in America following World War II. Over the past two generations, we have reshaped an entire continent to accommodate this new technology … If the typical American is asked to explain this transition, they would likely describe it as a narrative of progress. We used to be a people who walked everywhere and so we built cities around people who walked. We are now a people that drives everywhere and so it is only natural that we have built a society around people who drive.”

If I asked you to picture a great city, whether real or invented, what image would your mind conjure up? Would it be parking lots strewn with cars, the big-box meccas of Walmart and Meijer with parking lots that have as big of footprints as the stores themselves? Would it be a city where four lanes of traffic is the norm, a city where crossing the street as a pedestrian, where walking alongside a highway of speeding traffic, makes you feel like this place isn’t for you, the pedestrian?

Is this what a great city should be, a city that is built for and around the automobile?

The great automobile-dependent suburban experiment, of development built around automobiles, has largely dictated how we arrange, build, and experience our cities over the last 50 years. But it doesn’t have to be.

As Marohn wrote, for thousands of years, humans built settlements scaled to people who walked. For thousands of years, this was the formula for cities. Look at the arrangement of the historic part of our own downtown that pre-dated the car. Dense development. Buildings that are built right to the sidewalk. A continuous block of building facades. No parking lots. Pedestrian-level windows and enclaves. Buildings that as time went by and the economy grew, were upgraded and built up and next to. When a block had no more open lots to build, our downtown spread.

If I asked you to picture a great city, I can imagine most of you would picture something like this. The great cities of the world — Paris, Rome, New York City — were all originally built like this, according to this thousand-year-old formula. Even in our own downtown, the physical charm of our historic streets — imagine walking down Second Avenue — is due to this way of planning and arranging our cities.

Downtown revitalization truly became a movement as investment moved away from our traditional, walkable, historic downtown cores and moved toward drive-able, auto-oriented suburban development. Downtown revitalization moves that investment back into the places that predate the automobile. Back into the places that are created for people, for people to experience on foot.

The automobile is certainly here to stay, and for many who either live in areas without public transit or who don’t live in walkable or bike-able environments remains a necessary means of transportation. But if you are asked what the biggest problem is in our downtown, I hope you turn that question around and ask: How can we encourage our downtown to be a walkable place? To encourage people to walk around, to stroll, to linger? How can we ensure that we protect, encourage, and grow what differentiates our downtown from big-box, suburban development? How can we ensure that our downtown is built for people?

Anne Gentry graduated from Brown University with a degree in Comparative Literature and has studied in Italy and South Australia. She is currently Executive Director of the Alpena Downtown Development Authority.