Apparently, Boston isn’t interested in luring back all those boring old suburbanites, what with their retro four-wheeled pollution machines and their environmentally burdensome rug rats in tow.

Only footloose and bike-riding hipsters and wealthy empty nesters with a million or two to blow on a deluxe downtown condo need apply.

If you own a car and need something outrageous like a place to park it, then you had better just stay out in the ‘burbs where you belong!

Of course, Peter Meade, the Boston development chief who in past professional lives was a radio newsman and then a public relations guru, said nothing of the sort when he began spouting off the other day about reducing the number of parking spaces at new apartment and condo developments.

But sometimes attitude, tone and context can be as telling as wonky policy details.

And Meade and his minions are making pretty clear that in their view, Boston’s future lies with all those greenster young’uns who don’t own a car – or at least don’t register it in more expensive Boston – as well as wealthy empty nesters.  

For a city whose momentum is building on the cusp of making a case to the middle-class families that once spurned it, that’s a big mistake.

Fighting Words

Given that parking is notoriously scarce in Boston and spots in the fancier neighborhoods like the Back Bay can fetch $200,000, Meade has sparked a furor.

Meade wants the number of parking spaces required when new condo and apartment towers are built, already at a minimal .75 per unit, knocked down further for some projects.

A spokeswoman for Meade said there’s no plot to take away parking from city residents, with the reduction in parking spaces being contemplated only for a number of projects near transit hubs.

Still, it’s not just the Back Bay we are talking about, with examples of proposals to include a miserly number of parking spaces in new residential developments popping up in South Boston, Charlestown and Brighton.

Yet if the parking brouhaha is roiling residents in Boston’s neighborhoods, it is also sending a pretty chilling message to future potential city residents now living in the suburbs.

You’re welcome to live here, but cars just won’t cut it in the new Boston.

Self-Serving Stats

Meade and the Boston Redevelopment Authority are pushing back against the critics, rolling out some choice stats to back up the idea that the rising generation of Bostonians has no need for cars, let alone silly old parking spaces.

Among the seemingly impressive stats:

• One in three Boston residents are between the ages of 20 and 34.
• Almost 60 percent walk, bike, or take public transportation to work.
• The number of registered vehicles in Boston has dropped 14 percent in the last five years.

However, when I went over these stats with a spokeswoman for Meade and the BRA, a very interesting conversation ensued.

After all, Boston is one of the most densely packed student cities in the country and it isn’t all that surprising that there are lots of young adults between 20 and 34 in town.

Students without cars in Boston getting around on the T is hardly surprising – it’s what I did when I went to college in town two decades ago.

Yet when I asked for a break out of the number of students in that one-third number, I apparently asked the impossible.

First, I was given the number 10,000 – for the number of dorm rooms in town.

OK, but what about all those students doubling, tripling and quadrupling up in apartments across the city?

That, oddly, also turned out to be unanswerable.

Still skeptical, I asked what happens when all those twenty-somethings decide they are ready to settle down and have a kid or two?

Bad move. At that point, I was dismissed as a completely out-of-it suburbanite, out of touch with today’s eco-nutty youth.

Writing Off The Middle Class?

OK, even if you take at face value the argument put forth by Meade and development planners at Boston City Hall, it still writes off a whole segment of middle-class, middle-aged parents with kids for whom living in Boston might finally be intriguing.

But their lives are more complicated as well, with aging parents to look after and myriad professional and family commitments that can’t be all biked to. 

For that matter, trips to the grocery store – which, sadly, are few and far between in Boston, with no signs of bargain chains like Walmart of Market Basket – somehow work better with a car.

Especially if you are shopping for a family, instead of loading up on boxes for pasta for meals in your studio apartment after biking it back from your starter job.

We are talking about all those poor souls who just don’t have the money to move downtown and live at the Clarendon or Millennium or some other abode of the rich, and, even more sadly, don’t eat out every night at a trendy new restaurant and go to Whole Foods on a rare occasion.

But neither do they want to live the gypsy life of a footloose twenty something in the Fenway or Allston.

Of course, the really big lie here is that Boston is somehow evolving beyond the car.

It’s certainly the image that City Hall’s slick development chief wants you to believe, but it is riddled with holes and contradictions.

If that were the case, the city wouldn’t need the hundreds of cars and vans it keeps for use by its employees, all of you, mind you, are Boston residents, in theory. It’s millions of dollars each year, and you can be sure there are parking spaces for each and every one of these vehicles.

Boston’s mayor, who lives in Hyde Park, a neighborhood not particularly well served, gets out and about in a city-owned car, and has for years, long before his health began to seriously deteriorate.

Sure, some parts of Boston are reasonably well served by public transportation, especially the ritzier ZIP codes, but many other parts of the city aren’t.

You don’t have to love cars to need one, and a lot of people still do. 

That includes middle class folks that Boston, if it wants to keep its comeback moving forward, will have to find a way to appeal to.

It might then be a good idea to lay off the elitist car bashing.

Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at  sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com