Economy

London's Oxford Street Has a Message for the UK Economy

Christmas shopping in London will never be the same. Oxford Street has become permanently vehicle-free along a 1-kilometer stretch, in what the city’s mayor describes as a momentous occasion that puts the UK’s most famous retail thoroughfare on par with New York’s Times Square, the Champs-Elysees in Paris and Barcelona’s La Rambla. Banning traffic offers no magic elixir for the rest of the country’s struggling high streets. There are wider lessons in this historic transformation nonetheless.