Not only old theories about autism are flawed. Also modern theories. The Central Coherence is one of those modern theories. This is the name of the phenomenon that neurotypicals see a living room while autistics see a collection of chairs, tables and cupboards. Neurotypicals see a forest and autistics see a collection of trees. Neurotypicals see a normal number of people walking down the street but have no idea how many there are, autists see a collection of people and can estimate how many there are.
The theory is that it makes sense to group and name objects that belong together. What’s logical about that? It’s just as easy to say that neurotypicals have an extremely poor memory and cannot remember all those details. “Logical” is a value judgment. Value judgments have no place in science.
Because autistic people can see how many people are walking down a street. They can see what is causing the exodus of the inner city.
More and more shops in city centers in the Netherlands are going bankrupt, are empty for a period and are being replaced by homes. If things continue like this, inner cities will eventually turn into residential areas.
Autists have seen this development unfold before their eyes over the past 40 years. But every time we make a comment about it, neurotypicals confront us about not wanting to be bothered with these trivial details.
The depopulation of inner cities is the result of two developments. The rise of obesity and making the city center “liveable”.
Fat people have trouble walking. They don’t go very fast and they don’t get very far. Where thin people leisurely stroll ten kilometers up and down downtown to shop. Fat people need a means of transport to reach the city center. And therein lies the problem. While the obesity epidemic was spreading more and more, municipalities in the Netherlands did everything they could to keep the car out of the city center. With which they make it impossible for fat people to reach the city center
Fat people can hardly reach the city center
Forty years ago the obesity epidemic started and forty years ago municipalities started to make their inner cities car-free. People never notice the first ten kilos that they gain. Slowly, their love handles get bigger and they have more difficulty walking. But they don’t notice. So they had no objection to making inner cities car-free.
Forty years ago, on an average Tuesday afternoon, thirty thousand people walked through the city center of my hometown in the west of the Netherlands. Today there are less than five hundred. With the arrival of Sinterklaas, maybe ten thousand people walk through the city center. But they come to see and go home. They don’t buy anything.
Forty years ago we had a furniture store in a large retail building in the center. With a turnover of something like a € 100,000 a week. Thirty years ago, that business went bankrupt and was replaced by a shop that sold tailor-made suits for men. They would have had a turnover of perhaps €100,000 a month.
For the past thirty years, cars have been parked in the parking garage and fat people could still use the Winkelstraat (our Kalverstraat) which is close to the parking garage. But the center became unreachable for more and more fat people. Fortunately, there was also a bus with two stops in the center and of course they could go by bike. So there were still quite a few people who could reach the center. But there was a limit to the amount of items they could transport by bus. Transporting a table by bus was out of the question. But a tailor-made suit was just possible.
Fifteen years ago, the bus disappeared from the inner city. This was partly a result of budget cuts. This was also the result of measures taken by the municipality to protect the foundations of historic buildings in the city center. But with the disappearance of the bus, more and more shoppers from the city center also disappeared.
When fat people with a good income can’t reach the city center, shops go bankrupt
About ten years ago, the tailor-made suit shop went bankrupt. The property has been vacant for a few years. Now there is a shop that sells kitchen supplies. They may have a quarterly turnover of €100,000.
Over the past few years, the municipality has been working to ban bicycles from the city center. A bicycle parking space has been created at the beginning of the Winkelstraat and more and more shops have put up a sign “forbidden to place bicycles”.
In recent years it has become quite normal for shops on the Winkelstraat to be empty. At my last count it was about twenty. There seems to be little development. Every now and then a new shop opens, but then another goes bankrupt. (This was before covid. I don’t know the current situation.)
Somewhere in the last ten years we passed a tipping point. People used to go to the city center not only to shop, but also because it was fun. But nowadays it is no longer pleasant. As a result, people consciously avoid the city center. People buy items on the internet, not just because it’s easy, but mainly because they don’t want to go downtown.
For a shopping street, “cozy” means that the distance between two walkers who do not know each other may not exceed two metres. Nowadays, when I look into the Winkelstraat from the side of the railway, the first thirty meters are extinct. In the rest of the street, the distance between walkers is five to ten metres. Forty years ago, the distance between walkers was less than fifty centimeters. If the person in front of you suddenly stopped, you ran into them.
If there are too few people walking in a street, it is no longer cozy
Municipalities have been keeping track of how many cars and cyclists are driving through streets for decades. But strangely enough, they have never kept track of how many people, on a normal day, walk through a shopping street. While that is the most important measure of success. Except for large DIY stores, the amount of ads has less of an impact on the number of sales than the number of people walking down the street. About one in a hundred people walk in and buy something. So with the thousand people walking down the street on Saturdays, the hundred shops on the Winkelstraat each have ten customers.
People are always going somewhere. From the parking garage to a place of conviviality and buying opportunities. They don’t need to know the address of a store. But want to know what’s in the neighborhood. Nobody goes to a plus size clothing store 500 meters from the parking garage. Because after five hundred meters of walking, fat people have to rest and that is not possible in a clothing store. A group of clothing stores plus a restaurant can be a success. People walk to the restaurant and drink coffee. Go look and buy clothes. Have another cup of coffee and walk back to their car.
A major problem are obstacles that block the flow. When people shop they want to be able to walk in two directions with at least two people next to each other. Nobody wants to walk in front of or behind their boyfriend or husband, because that’s not fun. So four people should be able to walk side by side. A display, fence or hole in the ground that cuts the footpath in half for a few months can easily lead people to choose a different route. Then suddenly no one is walking down the street and all the shops go bankrupt.
With obstacles in a street, people disappear and shops go bankrupt
Blocking a street, for example by building a shopping center there, is completely out of the question. The municipality did that in our city. In order to keep the car out of the city center, they needed a parking garage plus shopping center. They built it halfway along the walking route from a parking lot, on the edge of the city center, to the Winkelstraat. The municipality could very easily have made a side entrance to the shopping center. But they did not. The result was that all the people walking through a small cozy shopping street suddenly disappeared.
Dozens of thriving stores literally lost all their customers overnight. Owners suddenly found themselves with unsaleable properties. Then came the slum landlords who hoped they would make money by letting the buildings go to waste. Thirty-five years later the municipality bought them out and at this moment the street is slowly becoming a bit more presentable. But it has become a residential street. There are only two small antique shops left plus a hash shop.
But the main problem is with transportation and transportation. When the people who want to go shopping in the inner city cannot reach the inner city. When they cannot take home the large items they buy in the inner city. Then the city center as an economic center is doomed.