I was walking around my home town recently. It's more than doubled since I left in 2002. Most of the new housing was built as new, dense (10-20 stories) suburbs.
Th urban architecture is not bad. Decent green spaces, so that buildings open into "garden paths" rather than streets. You can get between places using green pedestrian walkways. Conveniently located schools & creches. Most of the parking is underground.
The "economic architecture" OTOH, is striking. There are 2 small malls, walking distance from eachother, where all the cafes, resteraunts and shops are. There are two big commercial/adminstrative buildings where the dentist, post offices and stuff is. There is no high street, no corner stores, or any place that a sidewalk pizza shop could exist. ..no place where an independent retail or service business could exist, not even a news stand.
It occurred to me that not only is this related to "concentration of wealth" it is that concentration of wealth. Those Malls and commercial real estate can be owned by €bn funds. Street level real estate doesn't lend well to that.
Now... A lot of this has to do with the structure of the financial system, how things are capitalized. A developer can approach a large real estate fund, to sell a mall "off the plan." They can then go and presell leases, to their client base.. chain stores and restaurants.
There is no equivalent financial sector that could fund real estate suitable for sole traders. So, sole traders will decline. There is obviously a chicken-egg dynamic between the underlying economics (eg revenue per square meter, and hence rent) and the existence of a friendly capital market. But, I think causation runs the other way as well.
In this case, it just seems very planned. The architecture and planning of a city assumes a certain economy, the urban architecture reflects that, and the underlying capital system reflects that. The three lock eachother into place. If there had been a vibrant market for financing small retailers, but not malls, then the whole city would have probably been built differently.
Anyway China is unidealogical about such things, atm. They don't mind engineering a cityscape for a certain economy, engineering financial markets for a certain cityscape or cityscape or if the proverbial cat is black or white.
My long winded point is that maybe it's time to "pick winners" in financial markets, subsidizing or penalising certain types of capital markets over others. Ive always been dubious about market liberalism when it comes to banks.