We have seen this movie too many times. Stupid, naive, inexperienced young people with idiotic ideas on national television spouting ways to help the "urban" elites. The idea of closing streets was tried on hundreds of urban center downtowns areas with mixed results skewed to the downside.

Cities came into existence because they were manufacturing centers. Now they don't produce anything and are almost entirely centers of the "finance" "industry". Tons of people moving tons of fake money around, getting insanely wealthy, being a massive parasite on society. This is why cities are declining... the host is almost dead.

We'll ignore the vendors when they say that the stores are "not profitable" and haven't been profitable for YEARS. Walmart mentioned that their Chicago stores had NEVER been profitable in 20 years.