By telling them all to read Strong Towns.
I meant like actual tenant replacement. If a restaurant closes because lack of parking/access they'll probably say "oh well it must not have been that good" but many of these mixed-use buildings still struggle to attract tenants, especially high-rent ones. To survive on foot traffic in a high-rent area you basically need to functionally operate like a shopping district where people will still visit, not solely relying on local traffic. Even New York City survives a lot on the office worker/tourist crowd and not their own local area. There are too many examples I've seen where trendy mixed-use spaces are mostly empty and/or the restaurant that signed up on the lower level (often some sort of trendy cuisine
du jour—Korean barbecue, hot chicken, the latest yuppie take on tacos and burgers) folds within a few years.
It's
never a good idea to redevelop something without making you sure you have a bunch of tenants lined up to take the place. This is one reason why all those downtown pedestrian malls failed, they put up a lot of construction and made them harder to access (at least temporarily) and then never was able to replace them.
Sometimes they went the extra step and replaced all the buildings and streets with a big glassy galleria and nice shops...but then still ran into problems because the neighborhood still sucked and you had those people causing trouble there, you had basically the same stores people had in the suburbs, and there was paid parking to boot.
That's not to mention the residential aspect. Almost all of these big developments near downtown are marketed toward affluent yuppies because with development you basically
have to go upscale to make money, especially in expensive areas.
If you try to convert your neighborhood to "car free" and then extort existing residents to get rid of their cars/pay an outrageous fine then assuming you don't have a lawsuit on your hands, they're going to move out, and there's almost always going to be less desirable people ready to move in...and that creates a negative feedback loop.
Most importantly, they always forget the fundamental question. "
Why do you want to go there?" Among Disney parks fans, Paul Pressler got a bad reputation because he put too much focus on dining and shopping (and not very good shopping and dining at that). Pressler of course was wrong, people don't go to theme parks
to shop and eat (that's what the malls and restaurants around theme parks are for), they go there to have fun. They
definitely don't to go to theme parks to be in a "car-free environment".
