Except that when I went in the other day, the shops and cafes weren't particularly busy, and the car parks and bike racks weren't full.

When it is crowded these days, it seems to be more temporary visitors like tourists and summer school kids than locals. Even the students aren't around as much as they used to be, as some of the university departments that used to be based in the centre have moved a lot of their work to sites further out now.

Fair enough. I've only been a few times in the last few years and it's always been heaving. You had to wait in queues to get a seat in a coffee shop an that was during the holidays.

The city centre has changed noticeably over the past few years, if my visits are at all representative. There's less of interest generally and in particular a lot of the old independent shops and food/drink places seem to have gone, so I tend to go elsewhere or online for most things now. Apparently I'm not the only one -- it's hard to imagine I'd have done what I did the other day without queueing even once if I'd tried the same thing even a year or two ago.

I find it striking that I have met friends who live nearby down in London more often than I've met them in Cambridge lately. I've also done more of my bricks-and-mortar shopping in the big shopping centres down London way than in my local city centre. There's so much more to do and it's just generally so much more interesting and alive (and, frankly, clean) that contrary to krona, I find it very different to the feeling in central Cambridge these days.