The future of High Streets
With the London Assembly consulting on this, and coincidentally with my own work, his has been a hot topic for me lately.
Most people, it seems, when they hear "high street" think of shops. They lament that there are not enough of some types of shop and too many of other types of shop. They rehearse all the well-known and sometimes contradictory problems.
Rent / business rates are too high.
"They" should limit the number of [x] type of shop.
Car parking should be free and plentiful
There's too much motor traffic and consequent noise and pollution
and so on.
One person debating with me thinks gentrification is a good thing, but this is a working-class area and the council is seeking to regenerate without gentrifying, whilst may people think that regeneration is just gentrification in a thin disguise. They are against regeneration because they will be squeezed out by the increasing cost of housing and the decline in social housing stock that is the direct result of government policy since the early 1980s.
But I don't think competing with other high streets on the same terms - basically a better retail offer - is the way forward. Bricks and mortar retail is in decline faced with a rise in on-line shopping and the future of the high street could well not be primarily as a vehicle for retail.
That is not to say bricks and mortar retail is dead. Like the High Street, in must re-invent or adapt itself for the modern age. But I think the High Street 'question' is something like:
What does the high street give us that we want / is socially desirable , and that it is best placed to deliver or better placed to deliver than other means?
I think at that level of abstraction we start to look at the role of high streets as not simply shopping streets. Because shops are (were) in high streets and 'everybody' went to the shops, social interaction occurred as a corollary of the necessary acquisition of goods and services for daily life. But as more goods and services can be delivered by other means (online with home delivery most obviously) and this trend seems likely to continue, it seems to me that we need to change high streets so that they continue to facilitate the social interaction that is really their most important function, but directly, rather than as a useful corollary to shopping.
Even now we may observe some things (that may nevertheless be considered retail) prevailing in the high street that online can't, or is unlikely to make inroads into: I am already seeing grumbles about 'too many coffee shops' but they are nevertheless a good example of something that can't be done on line. The drinking of coffee is actually secondary to the social function.
Another rising star is barbers/hairdressers. Whether we'll see "driverless" versions of these is a matter of speculation, but it seems improbable that people will ordinarily get a haircut/hairdo at home.
Conventional clothes shops are a model of inefficiency. The vast majority of clothes in them don't fit you, or don't suit you, or you don't like them. They sit there as inventory, sometimes needing drasticc price reductions ("sales") to shift them. Why can't there be a clothes showroom? You can go there and look at / feel the clothes in real life. Then you could order them to be made in your size and delivered to the shop or home to you. Your size could be measured by a whole-body scanner also in the high street. Something you are probably not likely to have at home.
(I will leave it to others to deal with the phenomenon of showing your friend the clothes on you for them to feed back what you look like in them, though a good start has been made insofar as you can e-dress an avatar of yourself on line and see for yourself in what amounts to a digital mirror.
So the future of high streets subsists in radically different retail offers with a technical or social element that online/home delivery can't do. In fact replace "retail" in hat sentences with "goods and services" and I think we have it. There are already ventures into this new type of high street facility and we can and should learn from and copy them. As to fancy conventional shops, I'm not so keen. The high streets needs to be service-oriented, especially in working class areas, with an emphasis on what we might term services to society.
Most people, it seems, when they hear "high street" think of shops. They lament that there are not enough of some types of shop and too many of other types of shop. They rehearse all the well-known and sometimes contradictory problems.
Rent / business rates are too high.
"They" should limit the number of [x] type of shop.
Car parking should be free and plentiful
There's too much motor traffic and consequent noise and pollution
and so on.
One person debating with me thinks gentrification is a good thing, but this is a working-class area and the council is seeking to regenerate without gentrifying, whilst may people think that regeneration is just gentrification in a thin disguise. They are against regeneration because they will be squeezed out by the increasing cost of housing and the decline in social housing stock that is the direct result of government policy since the early 1980s.
But I don't think competing with other high streets on the same terms - basically a better retail offer - is the way forward. Bricks and mortar retail is in decline faced with a rise in on-line shopping and the future of the high street could well not be primarily as a vehicle for retail.
That is not to say bricks and mortar retail is dead. Like the High Street, in must re-invent or adapt itself for the modern age. But I think the High Street 'question' is something like:
What does the high street give us that we want / is socially desirable , and that it is best placed to deliver or better placed to deliver than other means?
I think at that level of abstraction we start to look at the role of high streets as not simply shopping streets. Because shops are (were) in high streets and 'everybody' went to the shops, social interaction occurred as a corollary of the necessary acquisition of goods and services for daily life. But as more goods and services can be delivered by other means (online with home delivery most obviously) and this trend seems likely to continue, it seems to me that we need to change high streets so that they continue to facilitate the social interaction that is really their most important function, but directly, rather than as a useful corollary to shopping.
Even now we may observe some things (that may nevertheless be considered retail) prevailing in the high street that online can't, or is unlikely to make inroads into: I am already seeing grumbles about 'too many coffee shops' but they are nevertheless a good example of something that can't be done on line. The drinking of coffee is actually secondary to the social function.
Another rising star is barbers/hairdressers. Whether we'll see "driverless" versions of these is a matter of speculation, but it seems improbable that people will ordinarily get a haircut/hairdo at home.
Conventional clothes shops are a model of inefficiency. The vast majority of clothes in them don't fit you, or don't suit you, or you don't like them. They sit there as inventory, sometimes needing drasticc price reductions ("sales") to shift them. Why can't there be a clothes showroom? You can go there and look at / feel the clothes in real life. Then you could order them to be made in your size and delivered to the shop or home to you. Your size could be measured by a whole-body scanner also in the high street. Something you are probably not likely to have at home.
(I will leave it to others to deal with the phenomenon of showing your friend the clothes on you for them to feed back what you look like in them, though a good start has been made insofar as you can e-dress an avatar of yourself on line and see for yourself in what amounts to a digital mirror.
So the future of high streets subsists in radically different retail offers with a technical or social element that online/home delivery can't do. In fact replace "retail" in hat sentences with "goods and services" and I think we have it. There are already ventures into this new type of high street facility and we can and should learn from and copy them. As to fancy conventional shops, I'm not so keen. The high streets needs to be service-oriented, especially in working class areas, with an emphasis on what we might term services to society.
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