Maybe town centres could become housing estates to avoid building on green sites?
There are certainly too many retail units and yet they still get built.
Where I work the whole town centre is pretty much 1 big shopping centre, I've never seen all the units full and yet nearly 2 years ago they opened a huge extension the flagship store of which is Debenhams. The Debenhams store is now going to close partly because of the high rents but the rumour is that the centre itself, and its parent company, are in financial trouble so they can't reduce the rents.
We all have to decide what retailers we feel are important enough to spend the money and time to keep open.
My standard clothing is boots/Converse, jeans/shorts, shirt/Tshirt, hoodie/top. The only thing I need to try on in a shop is the boots everything else I can order on line in 10 mins, try on tomorrow and, on the rare occasions that things don't fit or I don't like them, send rejects back for free. As far as I am concerned all clothes shops can close. Walking gear, for me, I like to see so I will go and pay for it in a shop.
Trying to hold back time on the demise of boring shopping is the equivalent of smashing the Spinning Jenny. The world is changing fast and big names will continue to disappear from the high street.