alt Hacker News> ome of the parking lots have office buildings now and the city lots have become very expensive. Much less activity there now, about a third of the venues are closed and the remaining ones are saying they can't last very long with fewer people going.
Sounds to me like that found a valueable use for their land and got rid of the low value things you really enjoyed...
Of course to you this is bad, and the city lost the night life, but that might or might not be worse overall. They seem to be a denser area despite it, for whatever that means.
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> Sounds to me like that found a valueable use for their land and got rid of the low value things you really enjoyed...
That would be the case if the storefronts didn't just wind up remaining empty. Empty commercial real estate is rife in the US right now.
Your "No Parking" area always has competition from the suburbs in the US. If you make parking too problematic, things can invert. Then, people will save up tasks for their trip to the burbs and be completely inert locally--they will do next to nothing with local businesses, do everything inside their house (way cheaper, you know, since I bought the stuff at Costco) and the car remains parked and unmoving until their next trip to the burbs. Once that inversion happens, your "walkable business area" spirals into more and more empty storefronts and the decline becomes ridiculously difficult to arrest.
> Sounds to me like that found a valueable use for their land and got rid of the low value things you really enjoyed...
Explain how is it more valuable to have roughly a third of the businesses close? And many others borderline surviving?
I fear in ten years this will be like the first example I mentioned, a ghost street with all business closed.