As Saint John struggles to fill its largely empty Peel Plaza parking garage, an urban planner says ample parking space is not the secret to attracting people to a city's core.

The city's recently-opened $16-million Peel Plaza parking garage runs huge annual deficits and is often less than one-quarter full.

Saint John council is cracking down on illegal parking lots to attract more cars to the garage.

Meanwhile, its transit system has struggled to maintain routes and service while staying within budget.

Brent Toderian, a Vancouver-based consultant on urban planning, says creating too many parking spots can weaken a city's downtown appeal.

"You can make a great place much worse by trying to solve the parking problem by overbuilding parking," Toderian said Thursday on Information Morning Saint John.

"It's much better to think about ways for people to get to downtown that doesn't involve the car, doesn't involve parking, like making walking, biking and transit a lot easier."

Toderian says many communities make the mistake of framing their downtown cores around the needs of shopping malls.

"The answer isn't to compete with the mall, the answer is to be something special and unique and build more housing in and around the downtown," he said.

"It's been the lazy, silver bullet in many downtowns, if we've got a weakened downtown, let's build more parking. That's caused more harm than it's done good."

Last month, Coun. Shirley McAlary raised the idea of adding condominiums atop the parking garage to add to its appeal.

Toderian says that idea has worked in other communities that overbuilt their parking.

But he cautions it would have to make sense for the area.

"I'd have to know if that would make the building too big in the downtown or something like that to know whether it's really a good idea, but I've seen it work in other places," said Toderian.

Saint John recently introduced a new program of incentives to encourage residential development in the city centre.

The program, which will provide financial help for upgrades, such as redeveloping upper floors, infilling empty lots and improving building facades, is expected to launch in the uptown in 2016.