Local shops, serving local needs, on a pedestrianised street vs. the same local shops serving local needs on a street with heavy traffic and cluttered pavements. Which environment is more amenable to the customers of those shops?
I've made it pretty clear throughout the thread that I'm aware of the argument that improving the public realm can attract different people and businesses which have economic consequences for those already living there.
I am attempting to get an answer to the question of whether the improvements themselves - in this case we are discussing pedestrianisation - are disproportionately attractive to one group of people over another. I want to separate out that question, from the one about consequencial effects on the businesses that then develop on such streets, to try and see to what extent we do or don't agree.
Your logic is impeccable.
I would still say that the political and economic situation in which improvements are done is a factor.
The Brixton Rec is an example. This was designed and planned as part of the post war rebuilding of this country. The politics behind it were of the post war left. That the working class should not just have access to swimming pools and a gym but should have a "Peoples Palace". The size of the space and facilities was above and beyond a purely utilitarian approach. The Rec was designed ( the Atrium) as a public space.
The Rec was part of a larger political project to change post war Britain. Those politicians and architects who designed this had direct knowledge of the 30s and WW2. The Rec was part of the post war Welfare State. Mass Council house building was part of this. And the Welfare State was not about , as it now is seen, about shirkers vs strivers. It was a collective project Listening now to a programme on radio that shows that
health is a collective issue. Or as its now put "wellbeing". Which is a term that depoliticises what is about reducing inequality in case it scares off middle England.
This now is seen as utopian. But its why when the Council were thinking of getting rid of the Rec there was uproar. The same kind of people ( in my opinion) ,who are sceptical of new planned improvements and opposed NR plans to "regenerate" the arches,turned up to give Cllr Lib Peck a barracking when they felt there Rec was threatened- and what it represented to them. Its what
CH1 was suggesting- If I read his post correctly.
So people are not always against improvements. Its the political and economic context they are done in that matters. Now its one where Neo Liberalism is the orthodoxy. The "free market" rules. As posters have said above improvements now mean the property owners can make a bigger profit. Its an orthodoxy our New Labour Council accepts as a given. It being the heirs of Blairism.
But I can agree this can have perverse effects. As up at LJ and the road closure. A poor area with low car ownership opposed plans to stop middle class commuters from the leafy south London from coming through there estate every morning and evening. If the Council had sold this on basis that its stopping the above it might have had a better chance of being supported. But this is New Labour. So they said it would help to make LJ a "destination".
So improvements that could be argued benefit the working class ( who are less likely to own cars and depend on public transport) are now seen as helping to push the working class out.