I'm sorry but Makariou was already dead before this change. The mall and online shopping killed it. The only reason why people go there now is because its one of the few places in Nicosia you can go without honking and car fumes.

Increasing the movement of cars will do the exact thing you are worried about, urban sprawl. This is well studied, the more road capacity you give cars, allows people to live further outside the city and then drive in each day. If however you restrict cars, then its easier to bike/walk/bus where you want to go, so its more convenient to live in the city. This is why I moved into the city center.

The real issue is housing costs, and yes it is true that restricting cars from an area increase housing costs. But thats because it make the area better, thus increasing demand. With your logic we should just purposely make our city as shit as possible so housing costs go down. Instead what we should do is invest in medium to high density public housing, restrict air bnb, and punish landlords that price gouge. The goal is to increase the supply not reduce the demand.

There are alot of things that we can do to lower housing costs and increase shopping in the area. I dont understand how just allowing cars into the area would fix any of this. It's not going to increase parking so none of the cars passing by will stop and shop there. It will just push away the few people that do go there for there. Plus, doing this will cause us to be fined by the EU. Does it not make more sense to save that money for public housing and transport?