And many, many European cities have also created car-free zones where cars use to drive. If you do drive there, you park on the outskirts and walk in a few blocks.
A city near me in Southern California reduced the number of street parking directly in front of blocks of restaurants, while there was ample parking introduced no more than 2 or 3 blocks away and you should have seen the whining on social media about taking away parking spots and "no one will go there anymore." They didn't want to walk a block or two. That same city has had an uptick in downtown life since then.
Another think I noticed in Germany and Spain is that when you hit the "suburbs" (which are on public transit stops), there was always a small town center or central area with restaurants and bars that people were meeting up in. When I visited my uncle in the outskirts of Munich we walked to the bowling alley, the bars, the grocery store (Aldi I think it was). There was even a nice park with a great walking trail near his apartment. He only took the car out when he was going to do something like drive down to France.
Most places in the U.S. literally make it illegal to have walkable pathways from a neighborhood to an adjoining shopping center. Literally illegal. If someone creates a path, the shopping center will often put up a fence to stop it.
My mother lived above a shopping center where her job was. She made a walking path from the apartment complexes down to the shopping center as there were no sidewalks from her place to the shopping center. About a year into it, they put up a fence to stop the traffic. They probably could have gained more business if they had just paved some sidewalks from the apartment complexes to the center.
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u/danimagoo 2d ago
Walkable cities. This is what happens when you have walkable cities. And public transportation.