Much of it is tax farming, e.g. parking permits and entry fees. In other places, councils pedestrianise space so that they can set up their own funfairs and Christmas bars etc in competition with local businesses.

I do not own a car right now, but I don't see much evidence of areas becoming more economically active, except in tourist traps. A lot of businesses and even retail has moved online or out of town to deal with rates. Most of the town centres round here I have seen are deserts filled with vape shops, tanning salons and hairdressers/barbers.

As I say elsewhere this is not just a city problem but a rural one. At my old home I would have to walk several miles to catch a bus which would appear several times a day. The majority of country areas here are not well served by buses.

> A lot of businesses and even retail has moved online or out of town to deal with rates. Most of the town centres round here I have seen are deserts filled with vape shops, tanning salons and hairdressers/barbers.

I think there is a mix of factors. Boomers started the giant supermarket trend, and there has been a giant megastore for everything that followed them. In my relatively small town, many things have moved to the city periphery because people like having a lot of choices and cheap stuff. Most of the offering is low-quality crap, but they don't mind; they actually like to buy more and more. The less it lasts, the better. Then you have the increased taxation by cities, of course, but this also applies to the megastore. It's just that they deal with much bigger volumes and exploit cheap labor, so it's easier to cover them. Finally, many things have moved online indeed, and very often it's not worth physically going to a store if you need a specific item because there is a 50/50 chance a store will have it or it's going to be the same cheap Chinese crap, just marked up.

There are still some decent stores in the cities; the problem is that their volumes are so low that the pricing is very high, and funnily enough, the people most likely to afford them (rich boomers) don't go there and instead flock to the megastore. You can't fix a problem with the "intelligence" that created it.

In the big EU cities it's a bit different; since most people will be on foot, it's very impractical to drive around even if you have a car.