| Comment | See, honestly, the main problem facing the city centre to me is quite simple - not enough people live there.
Most people I know have said their local neighbourhood high streets have been jumping the past six months. That's my own experience too. I've never seen the wee row of shops in nearby main roads busier.
People aren't travelling into the centre in anything like the numbers they used to for casual coffees, lunches, pubs, meetups with friends, nightclubs etc. Argyle Street and Buchanan Street are busy but that's because they have large retail outlets concentrated around there, particularly near St Enoch subway station. It quickly tails off as you move to Sauchiehall Street or elsewhere as you say.
Basically as I see it, the pandemic's shown the biggest problem facing the city centre economy not to be car parking spaces, bus lanes, one way streets or any of the number of things that are usually trotted out as reasons for its decline. It's simply that there isn't the population density where retail/services have a local demand base to live off of.
The medium-long term solution to this is to repopulate the city centre, which thankfully the council does seem to be planning for. |
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