> 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.