[dsomers]

Lol, have you been to the Midwest? In small and medium sized cites there downtowns are often dead, including the small city I grew up in. All of them easily accessible by car. Dead city centres in North America more have to do with the post war experiment of subsidizing inefficient sprawling car dependent suburbs. If you want to actually understand this read more from the advocacy group Strong Towns[0] they also have a great YouTube channel. Now compare small Midwest cities to small cities in the Netherlands like Leiden or Haarlem and you’ll see limiting traffic from downtowns has little to do with how well they do economically.

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/

[api]

That’s not as true as it used to be, but I don’t disagree with the wider point.

[dsomers]

I agree it’s improving from the 90s, but when I go back to the Midwest from Western Europe, the difference is dramatic simply in the number of people downtown in public spaces for cites with the same population.

[api]

That’s an extreme comparison! I bet only a few US cities would approach what you see in Berlin or Paris.

[dsomers]

I’m not talking about Berlin or Paris. I’m taking about small European cities I’m familiar with that have vibrant walkable downtowns. Off the top of my head, Leiden Netherlands, Haarlem Netherlands, Peacara Italy, or Zug Switzerland.

[frosted-flakes]

If you ban cars they will be even more dead.

[dsomers]

Not true. Go to Leiden Netherlands and see how economically vibrant a small city can become if it incentives efficient land use and limits traffic in city centre in favour of pedestrian paths an public transit.

[Griffinsauce]

I think you're overselling Leiden as an example of this here, isn't traffic blocked from just one main shopping street and one other (steenstraat) made somewhat hard to access?

I'm not sure I would say the latter change, which was recent-ish, made a big difference versus just the general cleanup of the inner city (better train station, spruced up Beestenmarkt square etc).

[dsomers]

Sure, there are still plenty of places you can drive in Leiden. I guess the point I’m trying to make is small cities in North America favour car transportation to an extreme. It is to the point where it’s physically dangerous to walk to some places because their aren’t even sidewalks and traffic travels much faster inside the cities than you’d ever see in the Netherlands.

Compared to small cities in North America, Leiden infrastructure is amazing — as is a lot of Dutch towns. It not that you have to completely block off all roads either. It’s just that everywhere there are roads for cars, there’s also equal space for bike and pedestrians and public transit is invested in much more. If you want to see a video series that compares the two look up the YouTube channel notjustbikes

[j4yav]

Nice to see my town mentioned! I hope we remove even more of the current traffic roads in the center, it is great.

[frosted-flakes]

The Unites States is not the Netherlands. If the downtown is already dying, banning cars will finish it off.

[ben-schaaf]

It certainly isn't any more, but before the 70s the Netherlands was looking at America when it came to modern infrastructure. Lots of cars, huge roads, pedestrian hostile intersections, massive amounts of and ridiculous highways (Just look at this crazy thing: https://mobile.twitter.com/notjustbikes/status/1176840020751...). It didn't kill the downtown in the Netherlands and they were in much the same position.