An organisation which campaigns for pedestrianised streets produces report that "proves" pedestrianised shopping areas increase footfall and sales.Well colour me suprised!Actually the report is rather better than I expected, the authors of the report freely admit that there is a major issue generally with the quality of evaluation in the literature they have used in the report.The only problem with relying on a series of case studies is that it simply raises the question of how were the case studies selected, and specifically whether the majority of case studies were selected because they supported Living Streets agenda.I can give an example of the town I grew up in which in the 1990s completely killed the shopping centre by making all car parking restricted and expensive. It took a multi-million renovation program, 10 years and making all car parking free (technically you have to buy a disk for £5 but it covers not just the town but the entire county), for the shopping area to revive - and even now a significant proportion of local shopping is done in the next town across because it has a large out of town shopping development.As for the posts about Shrewsbury, unlike most posters I have actually visited the town a few times, it is a really nice town centre with a lot of history, lots of old buildings and narrow streets and a lot of steep gradients to walk up or down. TBH I am not surprised about it being pedestrianised but I doubt it is a big issue because there is a large and cheap car park just on the other side of the river which,from memory, is just over 5 minutes walk from the shopping centre
Justin Stephenson ● 9d