Place's need impresarios not managers - thoughts on reviving Britain's towns

 It was raining. Not the soft springtime rain that makes everything sparkle but that cutting, icy rain you get in Keighley's winters. Everyone is moving quickly, collar up, wanting to get their business done so they can get home. It's a scene repeated across the North's small towns, no bustle and hustle just get the job done and get home. Of course, the rain didn't help but neither does the gradual hollowing out of the town's offer - Marks and Spencer has gone, the market is a little gap-toothed with empty stalls and the glorious architecture of North Street can muster only a tattoo parlour and a couple of dowdy charity shops.

I'm sure that, were I to return to Mexborough where I interviewed market traders for my masters degree dissertation, I'd see the same. And the same slightly tired looking people would say the same things - a slightly bewildered take on why their town has gone from a happy bustling place to the depressing high street it is now. People will blame the supermarkets, Amazon and the council but then remember that their daughter-in-law ordered all that stuff off her phone for them. Hesitating they'll return back to their theme - ideas like an online shopping tax or cuts to business rates sound good to them as does more investment.

Across the whole of England, not just the North, this pattern is repeated. For every thriving town like Harrogate there's a dozen like Keighley or Mexborough. We get excited at how Whitstable, Hebden Bridge or Saltaire is thriving and glibly assume that with a bit of grant money, some paint and good wishes the same can be true of Sittingbourne or Scarborough. And this isn't just a British problem - you'll see the same in France, in Spain and across the USA. Outside tourist destinations, wealthy exurbia and delightful university towns, the pattern of decline is everywhere - fewer shops and fewer customers and a narrative harking back to what it was like in the old days.

Back in my advertising days, we used to talk about the "magic wand" clients. They'd arrive at our door with a brief that said something like "we're in the same business as (name of successful company), make us the advertising that will do the same for us". And we, being the good direct marketers that we were, would patiently explain that the company they wish to emulate built up its business over two decades and, as my colleague John Hinchcliffe would observe, "marketing isn't about magic it's about boring routine day after day". The client would listen and then respond with "ah, but...".

If we are to do something to improve these towns - and the new government seems set on doing so - we need to start by being honest about what can be done and what can't be done. The high street of the 1960s isn't a realistic aim and nor can we point to a place with millions of tourists visiting every year and 'replicate' what's there (and, however hard it tries, your town probably isn't going to get those millions of visitors). Nor will there be some sort of shopping revolution - even with an "Amazon Tax" - that will see all those old shops we vaguely remember returning to the high street.

So what should we be doing (other than making clear that there's no magic wand)? For some the whole thing is really about cities - if you make it ever so easy for people to whizz from these declining towns into the bright lights of the nearest city everything will be fine. And, in economic terms I have some sympathy with this view that towns need to become nice dormitories for well paid city workers if they are to succeed. But the problem with this is that, not only is well-paid employment dispersed, but that there simply are too many towns for this strategy to work for all but a few. The approach will be great for Otley or Hexham but do we really believe that putting on slightly nicer trains into Sheffield from Mexborough will suddenly make well-paid Sheffield workers move there?

Right now local councils, regional mayors and combined authorities across the North and Midlands are drawing up plans to get their slice of central government regeneration cash. These plans will include welcome investment in rail infrastructure, road schemes of one sort or another as well as plans for buses, cycleways and pedestrianisation. There'll be an assortment of town centre improvements, the encouragement of town centre living and lots of talk of 'green infrastructure'. But I worry that, in the end, there'll be more disappointment than transformation as high street shopping continues its decline and people vote with their feet. There's an irony too about that investment in speedy connections for workers - getting into the big city centre doesn't just help commuters, it means shoppers have more choice of where to spend their pound. Why would you go to Keighley when, for a few quid and half-an-hour, you can zoom into Leeds on a train and shop there?

The principle changes on the high street are the continued decline in comparison shopping as online buying grows, the arrival of the shop as a brand marketing tool and the shift from buying stuff to leisure and pleasure as the main driver of activity. My wife and I joke about our Christmas shopping trip to Harrogate - we drive there and park, have a coffee then do some perfunctory shopping before having a nice long lunch followed by a frantic dash round to the couple of shops we always planned to visit. On your next visit to a thriving high street, count the number of cafes, bars and restaurants, look at how boutiques, bookshops, delis and gift shops also serve food and drink. Then consider the arrival of new destinations - escape rooms, indoor crazy golf, adult ball pools (and those for the more traditional child audience), mini-cinemas and those places where you can paint a piece of crockery while having a cup of tea.

My view of the high street changed way back in 2007 when I read a (2005) article by Susie Pryor and Sandford Grossbart entitled "Ethnography of an American Main Street":

Other consumers and retailers describe social activities on Main Street, which they associate with a variety of experiences, including dining; window shopping; strolling for relaxation; jogging for health reasons; pub crawls; wine tastings; book clubs; language clubs; craft guilds; charity events; art events; parades; demonstrations; mass celebrations following major sports victories; and meeting friends. Many informants also refer to social interactions between and among retailers and consumers.

We got ourselves trapped in the idea of the town centre as a prosaic place of shopping, the old world of Hoagy Carmichael's 'Little Old Lady' - "A little bit of business here, A little bit of business there, Bet that you've been window shopping, All around the square" - when the truth is that most of the time business isn't the reason we're in the town centre. Pryor & Grossbart's list tells a different tale - the town centre is about our social life and our interaction with our neighbours not just about buying washing powder, new shoes or a steak. So if you spend a lot of money making the place look better without thinking about how you're going to get people into town then you're going to be disappointed. Not in the short-term - folk will say that the council is trying with that new pedestrianised bit, with the smart benches, pieces of public art or a water feature - but long-term you need to make your town somewhere that people know is interesting, varied and engaging.

Fred Kent who founded the Project for Public Spaces set out with Kathy Madden from the Social Life Project a series of ways to reinvigorate towns - it's an American perspective so needs caution in applying it to Britain but what's striking is that eight of Kent & Madden's nine suggestions are not about shopping (the ninth is street markets and farmers markets). The focus is on placemaking here and I suspect this will be in the core of the proposals winging their way to Whitehall for a slice of the expected cash bonanza. I don't think this is enough, what we need once we've made a place is a programme for that place, reasons - large and small - for people to visit Mexborough or Keighley or Melton Mowbray. What places need is the impresario, someone - or many people- to programme the events, occasions and activities that will bring the visitors.

Imagine if, instead of quaking in horror at the prospect of hen or stag parties, the town said "we'd love to have you here but come and talk to us first so we can make it a really special day". Think about the town that organised a parade - with a brass band and everything - for the winners of the local junior football league. And think of a place that filled its town with events and activities rather than trying to chase the rainbow by trying to be Shoreditch or The Ramblas. This approach calls for a different style of town centre management - less enforcement and control, more marketing and engagement - and for local authorities of every sort to give more attention to what we do rather than what we build.

My advice, such as it is, for those in government who want to make Britain's towns better is to look beyond infrastructure investment and to consider how we get the revenue in place to support the things that make towns work - good town centre management, well-funded and welcoming public libraries, great community centres, parks and playgrounds, flower beds and clean streets. And to work with those towns to shift them from centres of dull business into places for leisure and pleasure. This means better funding for councils to do these things, backing for BIDs and other innovations in managing centres. Finally, we need to get better marketing into these places, to escape from the deadening tendency to want to be like that super place you visited on your holidays or the funky central London haunt your daughter told you about. Perhaps an Institute for Place Marketing or some such might help by bringing together the best thinking on how to promote towns as destinations.

I appreciate that there are other considerations - better jobs, improving schools, reducing crime - in the agenda for Britain's towns but, if you want the public to see a real improvement then doing something positive about our changing high streets and town centres is imperative. And this starts with us no longer seeing the shop as the driver for town centre success - those libraries, parks, flower beds and band concerts are important too because the centre is a performance space for the town's citizens not just a place of business.

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