No, if this really is a failure for the street-level commercial real estate market to clear due to low price elasticity, which vacant shop fronts seem to announ

No, if this really is a failure for the street-level commercial real estate market to clear due to low price elasticity, which vacant shop fronts seem to announce quite loudly, then a political solution increasing the costs of intransigence should at least cause some landlords to shit or get off the pot. They can ratchet the penalty up a notch every few years to force more of them to come to Jesus. It is, after all, a purely pecuniary concern on the part of the landlords. More generally speaking, real estate market failure is very much a problem that local policy can solve. Global investors are looking for safe havens for their wealth. As much of the attractiveness has to come from the local legal environs, which can be more or less friendly to those types of investors. It just takes the political will, which admittedly, can be quite thin.