[guax]

I think you make a big mistake in framing this shift in city design to accommodate shopping. Its made to accommodate living. People need walkable safe cities to go to work, school, doctors, restaurants and yes, shopping occasionally.

The different is that this shift is not meant to improve a shopping street, is meant to improve a residential one that would have only parking and narrow sidewalks. If you walk in Amsterdam outside of the inner canal rings, you'll see people using the streets as extensions of their living spaces, little gardens, benches for when the sun is hitting just right, talking to friends and making birthday parties. The idea is to change the streets to be pleasant to be in, not just pass through.

With remote work and online shopping cities have to change from the place where we work, buy stuff and get the hell out to places we actually want to live in.

[kleiba]

I've never claimed that this shift is being made (only) to accommodate shopping. But it's a fact that inner city shopping is in crisis and it is in the interest of city administrations to take counter-measures. However, the strategies to handle car traffic (probably, like you say, with the intention to improve other aspects of life in the city) are detrimental to that effort.

Not every potential customer of inner city shops actually lives in the city. As a matter of fact, where I currently live, none of the smaller suburbs and town in the vicinity of my next bigger cities do not have themselves alternatives for many of the commercial offers of the city. In other words, many many (potential) customers need to first travel to the city. If you ask these people, many will tell you that there is currently no viable alternative to the car for such a trip. And almost everyone would appreciate if their trip would be less painful, not more painful.

Of course you can argue that city planners should first and foremost care for the people that live in the city, not the ones that live around it.