They switched many inner cities to pedastrian-only zones in Germany decades ago. What becomes more and more apparent now is that it seems to slowly but surely kill retail in inner cities. It starts with people getting their groceries at the outskirts of cities. More and more retail then is attached to those supermarkets and people only do clothes and specialty items shopping in the cities anymore which incidentally are the categories most people buy on the internet by now (its just more convenient then spending a fortune on parking and then walking for 15 minutes to get to the shop you want to get to).
In the end, while it sounds nice, in the age to the internet people are too lazy to keep a pedestrian-only inner cities viable from a retail perspective.
In the end, while it sounds nice, in the age to the internet people are too lazy to keep a pedestrian-only inner cities viable from a retail perspective.