This is it, and I have heard politicians talk about these same ideas for years in my area. Alas, it looks like it's easier said and done, because the downward spiral is still ongoing.

And one of the reasons is definitely that out of your list, city planners have very different ideas about the first point, free parking. They want the opposite: ideally, no cars in the city at all. So, parking fees have been raising to exorbitant ranges as they want to incentivize people to take public transport instead. Except that people instead turn to internet shopping.

> Except that people instead turn to internet shopping.

Largely because no-one wants to go shopping then carry potentially heavy items on a bus or bike.

I grew up near Bluewater shopping center in England, which had plentiful free parking, lots of good shops that were open late and a security team which moved people doing undesirable things along.

Compare this to the nearest towns (Chatham, Gillingham, Strood, Rochester), where the (often Conservative!) council members seemed perplexed that people didn't want to pay £6/hour to park in a decrepit garage that constantly smelled of piss and walk past myriad instances of low-level quality of life crime to get to shops that closed before most office workers could reasonably leave work.

I haven't been back in ~10 years but I imagine the situation now is even worse and all of those towns are in the same category of vape shops, charity shops and empty shops.