Remove cars, let people have a pint in the sun. The vast majority of the failure of the city is that we’ve moved so far away from what a city is, instinctually, that we don’t notice that they are entirely unpleasant places to be.

Loads of European cities and towns have developed extensive pedestrian-only zones. It doesn't necessarily bring life back after the Covid years. Many people today are going out less regardless of what nice amenities urban planners provide, and having food delivered appeals more to many young people than actually visiting an eatery.

I'd say it's necessary but not sufficient. The place has to be a place people want to be, and cars are just one part of that.

My observation in europe is that pedestrian only areas in city center tend to be the most commercially successful areas in large cities.

In small towns maybe less because most people going shopping aren't from the town itsef but its surroundings so if they need to bring a car in the first place, they'd rather go where they can park it. And this is somehow a failure on how most european cities have tackled mobility itself. A lot of urban areas have been equipped with more or less secure bike paths, but they too often become impractical or plain dangerous outside in the larger area outside of the cities.

The confounding variable is the correlation with these pedestrianized areas with guarenteed foot traffic and hungry belly tourist traffic especially from more deeply pocketed people capable of international travel than locals.

These areas aren't only used by tourists. People genuinely like them. Tourists actually often make them less attractive and affordable because price go up and quality of services tend to go down.

Well no, but its a huge leg of the chair, those tourists with their disposable income fit for European vacation from half the world over, who are guaranteed to show up in this particular neighborhood for probably forever, vs the tesco on the outer ring road.

Funny hearing this about the UK where a major A road looks like some dusty forgotten american rural county route. You can complain about building for the car after you’ve ripped apart the middle of london for a 12 lane viaduct freeway with four level interchanges.

Any road, no matter how small, prevents the area around the businesses from being a social space.

If you can’t put a picnic table on it, it’s a place where movement must be prioritized over recreation.

Tough to bring in a picnic table without a road leading to it

That was planned after the war, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Ringways but mostly didnt happen apart from a few pieces like the Westway.

But we did remove traffic from half of Oxford Street last week.

[delayed]

My partner works in planning and economic growth for a council and the level of local opposition to this especially from local businesses is enormous. But every time I go to a high street I look around and think "this would be nicer if it wasn't for this bloody road".

Death of the city happened after death of the third place. In between were the consequences of white flight made possible from suburbanization.