Well, today's rural areas are tomorrow's suburbs. If you want to stop the rural areas from becoming a car slave suburban sprawl, then you need to do something differently than what we did in the past. It sounds like people in your town are forward thinking.
Plus, if there is plenty of room then you'll still have parking, until that land becomes more valuable for something else.
I consider it so forward thinking as to be unrealistic.
I hear what you are saying but my town is more or less in accessible and a suburb to know where. We don't uber and taxi's after dark should be considered ahead of time. We have minimal mass transit system that essentially connects towns together. If we ever get train service from a metropolitan city I could see it.
Currently I see the people demanding reduced parking requirements as echoing talking points they don't understand.
The area of the town is around 43 square miles. The houses are not near the grocery stores.
New England towns used to be very neighborhood centric. Our town used to have 14 schools because everyone had to walk to school. Our schools have been centralized and now require busing.
Walkability used to be a thing but no longer. Off street parking is convenient during snow removal.
New England towns are 100s of years old. My town was considered the gateway to the west as it is the last town in the northwest corner of Massachusetts.
The town was developed around walking but our modern infrastructure has eliminated the practicalities.
My only point is that parking minimums shouldn’t be thought of as universal solution.
If you are talking about Williamstown then even though it is spread out it looks fairly cyclable. At least distance-wise.
There is even a big shared carpark for the built-up area so individual shops don't need to provide parking.
Whereas in North Adams the aerial view shows the (I assume mandated) carparks are pretty empty. I'll bet a few landlords would love to have more buildings and less carparks
Remember when you say "our modern infrastructure has eliminated the practicalities" you pretty much mean everything is designed for cars.
The big shared car park that I presume you see is the college's parking for a theater almost any parking lot you see in Williamstown is the college's.
I'm not saying it is not cyclable. When managed to get a bike path built all the way to North Adams. The neighborhood argued against using the easement on their properties and caused a multi-year delay and 2 mile diversion of the bike path.
I'm saying that the entire environment is built around cars. The entire notion that limiting parking for apartment buildings will help housing costs is backwards. People need access to groceries all year round and if the closest grocery store is in North Adams it is too soon to worry restricting parking.
North Adams on the other hand has a really weird relationship to cars and the destruction of the local economy.
Sometime in the past 50 years some central planner decided that have Route 2 run through North Adams downtown was inconvenient. The fix was to tear down all the buildings on Main Street and replace them with an overpass and Route 2 can then run through straight through with only a couple of stop lights.
This plus the loss of factory jobs decimated the economy local economy in the late 70's. When I move to the area in the 2001 they had the highest teen pregnancy rate in at least Massachusetts.
MassMoca is a contemporary art museum meant to lift North Adams and I would say after 25 years it is showing some traction with the local economy. North Adams is the best place for housing in the area. The downtown has everything one needs including affordable housing. North Adams doesn't need to build more parking. If the trolly that used to connect Williamstown to North Adams still existed that may change my position on parking in Williamstown.
My Mom was anti-car and growing up in Florida we could do anything we needed in Gainesville on foot, bike, or bus. When we moved north to Pennsylvania Dutch country we got a car.
I'm surprised by your diligence and I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have.
Plus, if there is plenty of room then you'll still have parking, until that land becomes more valuable for something else.