[jjav]

> People forget that one of the reasons why the malls became so popular and helped collapse the old downtowns was, you guessed it, lack of free parking.

Yes, I witnessed this first-hand in the neighborhood where I went to school.

Very vibrant walkable downtown full of shops and restaurants but also tons of street parking. Then one year government wanted more money so they put up parking meters and pushed up the rates to a point most people couldn't afford it (it was a low income area).

Now ~20 years later? The whole downtown is boarded up abandoned shops, just a couple liquor stores remain open. Very sad. All the shops that could move, moved to the malls.