I've seen this play out in many old town cores in the 90s. In those cases parking wasn't entirely removed, but it was converted from free to quite expensively m

I've seen this play out in many old town cores in the 90s. In those cases parking wasn't entirely removed, but it was converted from free to quite expensively metered. What happened? People stopped going to the small shops in the old downtown and went to the mall instead (free parking). The small shops slowly all died off and the old charming downtown is a boarded up ghost town. Yeah, great first step.