This is, for lack of a better explitive, fucking awful for the economy. If you have a restaurant district and everyone's paying "maximum sustainable rent", the customer is getting the "minimum sustainable product". If you spend $10 on a salad, more of that money that could be going to fresh local lettuce is being spent on rent so you get a worse product for that $10. The existence of the landlord isn't making the economy bigger better faster wherever, they're...literally just rent seeking.