It seems there’s barely a brand that’s immune from the malaise hanging over the British high street. Marks & Spencer and House of Fraser now look to be in serious trouble. Take a walk through the heart of many towns and cities up and down the country, and you’ll encounter a bleak vista: the all-too-familiar array of pound shops, bookies and boarded-up vacant lots. And things aren’t likely to pick up anytime soon, with the high street recently seeing the biggest year-on-year drop in footfall for nearly a decade.
Cue lots of ideas about how we can reverse the fortunes of high-street shops, such as discounts on business rates for retailers competing with huge online retailers such as Amazon that face nowhere near the same tax bill. But the long-term trends in people’s purchasing habits – spending more of their disposable income on leisure activities, and less on stuff, and buying more online – are unlikely to be arrested by propping up a struggling retail sector.
Despite the doom and gloom, predictions of the death of the high street are misplaced – at least to the extent that they envisage town centres as essentially existing for shopping only. Transforming the fortunes of our high streets, and the prospects of people living or working in them, is eminently possible. But to do so, we need to reimagine town centres as places where, as the urbanist Jane Jacobs put it, the theatre of life can thrive.
This means setting aside the obsession with shops, and focusing instead on bringing in more housing and a wider range of businesses. High streets need to be made more open and attractive, with amenities such as libraries, parks and leisure centres, and better transport links.
Thirty years ago, the centre of Manchester was a rundown and dreary place. Crumbling buildings and swaths of wasteland pointed to the city’s post-industrial decline, and the streets were devoid of life after 5pm. Few businesses wanted to locate, and even fewer people chose to live there.
Today its city centre is dramatically different. Its bars and cafes are bustling, formerly rundown areas such as Spinningfields and St Ann’s Square have undergone a major facelift, and the continuing presence of cranes reflects the boom in city-centre living.
Its transformation did not happen by accident, but as a result of concerted action by local leaders. The massive destruction wreaked by the 1996 IRA bomb accelerated these efforts. A masterplan was put in place, focusing on boosting leisure and cultural facilities such as the Royal Exchange theatre and the Corn Exchange building. The Metrolink, first introduced in 1992, was extended. Birmingham, Leeds and Bristol have been similarly reimagined; in each, retail is a thriving part of the high street, but as a byproduct of its wider success.
This stands in contrast to many other places. Despite all the talk, government policy for much of the past three decades has favoured out-of-town developments over vibrant town and city centres. Take my home town, Swansea. It was the location of one of the first enterprise zones, championed by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, which lured businesses out of town in return for exemptions on business rates. It did little to increase employment, but hollowed out the city centre. These issues were further exacerbated by the development of suburban retail outlets on the edge of town. The centre of Swansea remains a struggling place to this day.
Not every town or city can aspire to replicate the success of somewhere like Manchester, which is in large part based on its status as a key economic hub. Bolton, Blackburn and Wigan can’t hope to compete with Manchester or Liverpool when it comes to shopping. So it’s even more important they find other reasons to make their high streets desirable.
This kind of thinking is evident in Coventry. Rather than prioritising retail, the city has focused on boosting office space and housing, improving public space and adding more hotels and restaurants. The plan is to make the city centre a better place “to work, live, play, visit and stay” – which will also boost its shops.
There is much to ponder here for the main political parties, who need to win over urban voters. The issues facing town centres reflect the struggles of Britain’s “left behind” places, encapsulating the economic insecurity that characterises such communities. If our leaders learn the right lessons, they may find that the path to power runs through our high streets.
• Andrew Carter is chief executive of the Centre for Cities
