[xauronx]

A really small town near me shut down their main street and built a parking garage in order to make it a more walkable area about a decade ago. Unfortunately, all of the shops there closed up over the years because of a lack of foot traffic and they just reopened the street to traffic this year.

I think this type of thing would require a ton of compact living area nearby (apartments, etc) where people almost use the area as their "yard". The small town I mentioned is mostly suburbs where everyone has a small slice of backyard.